Drop Test Simulation and Verification of a Dishwasher Mechanical Structure

It is critical for dishwasher manufacturers to design the front door hinge system and the structural components of a dishwasher assembly in terms of appearance and satisfying functional requirements. Since dishwasher users and customers request receptive quality elements from front door, it is necessary for example to know how many kilograms of decorative wooden door can be assembled to the built-in front door without endangering the durability on every single opening state. Arcelik A.S. Dishwasher Plant R&D Structural Design Department decided to design a new door hinge with a new mechanical dishwasher structure to accomplish more receptive quality requests and to enhance more robust structure than its current designs. Plastic bottom housing and the required new package module are the critical parts of this new mechanical structure. In this paper, the designs of these parts were optimized with finite element model by accomplishing the drop test analyses. The nonlinear explicit finite element code LS-DYNA® was used for the drop impact simulations. This study involves finite element analysis (FEA) of the drop test of the free-standing dishwasher structure to determine the weak areas in the assembly. The structure was then tested in real time and the results are compared with FEA results. The FEA model will provide any future improvements on the new structure and the packaging module of this new dishwasher platform. Arcelik A.S dishwasher plant will use this new mechanical structure to whole product range.