Virtual-prototype-based development of household refrigerator-freezer appliances.

This paper presents the virtual-prototype-based development of household refrigerator-freezer appliances. The virtual prototype (VP) consists of five sub-models for the compressor, the diabatic capillary tube (DCT), the condenser, the refrigerator/freezer evaporators and the transient heat transfer inside the appliance envelope. The first two sub-models rely on semi-empirical modelling, the second two on the finite control volume, while the last one is based on finite-difference modelling. The VP was experimentally validated by performing temperature and refrigerant mass flow measurements for an actual appliance in a constant climate chamber at an ambient temperature of 25 °C. The average difference between the predicted and measured values was ±13%. The presented VP was used for a case-based development, in which different sizes of the DCT, the evaporators, the condenser and the compressor-displacement sizes were used in the simulations. The experiences of using the VP show that this tool has a great impact on reducing the experimental time and costs during the prototyping phase for new refrigerator and freezer appliances.