KR20120079797A - Method for controlling clothes dryer - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A controlling method of a clothing drier capable of reducing the drying time is provided to actively induce the movement of laundries during a drying process for uniformly transfer hot air. CONSTITUTION: A controlling method of a clothing drier comprises a step of gradually varying the rotation speed of a tub(110) during a drying process. The rotation speed of the tub is maintained in the minimum or maximum rate for the predetermined time in the designated range. The rotation speed of the tub is varied in 6 steps.

Description

Control Method of Clothes Dryer {METHOD FOR CONTROLLING CLOTHES DRYER}

The present invention relates to a control method of a clothes dryer for drying while rotating a tub in a state in which laundry is put in a tub.

A clothes dryer is a kind of household appliance that normally washes laundry that has been washed, that is, clothes mainly using hot air, and includes a tub (or drum) for receiving a dry object, a driving source for driving the tub, and air flowing into the tub. It comprises a heating means for heating the blower unit and the like to suck or discharge the air inside the tub.

Clothes dryers can be classified into various dryers according to the criteria for classification. First, the clothes dryer may be classified into an electric dryer and a gas dryer according to a method of heating air, that is, a heating means. The electric dryer heats air using electric resistance heat, and the gas dryer heats air using heat generated by combustion of gas.

In addition, the clothes dryer may be classified into a condensation type dryer and an exhaust type dryer according to a treatment method of wet air generated while drying a drying object. In the condensation type dryer, the air that has been exchanged with the drying object in the tub and humidified is circulated without being discharged to the outside of the dryer. In the exhaust type dryer, air that has become humid by being heat exchanged with a drying object in a tub is discharged directly to the outside of the dryer.

Such a conventional clothes dryer performs drying by evaporating moisture contained in the laundry by hot hot air supplied to the tub. In order to perform this drying efficiently, hot air must be evenly transmitted to the laundry which has been put in place. It may be difficult to evenly distribute the hot air.

For example, when a large amount of cloth is put into a tub or a large volume of laundry is dried, most of the space inside the tub is taken up by the laundry. There was also a problem such as increased drying time or increased power consumption to fall.

In order to solve this problem, hot air is evenly transferred to the cloth during drying, and the tub is rotated during the hot air delivery process so that the cloth is not stagnant.However, if there is a lot of laundry loaded, the laundry does not move well. There is a limit because it is not.

In addition, a dryness sensor is included in the tub to measure the dryness, and as the laundry agglomerates, the dryness difference between the adjacent portion of the dryness sensor and the non-drying portion becomes larger. Therefore, even if it is determined that the drying is completed by the dryness sensor, there is a problem in that a part of the drying is not completed or excessively dried.

The present invention has been made to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art as described above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a control method of a clothes dryer that can more evenly transfer the hot air by inducing the movement of the laundry in the drying process more actively. have.

According to an aspect of the present invention for achieving the above technical problem, as a control method of the clothes dryer for performing a drying stroke while rotating the tub rotatably mounted in the cabinet, a predetermined rotation speed of the tub during the drying stroke Provided is a control method of a clothes dryer, the method comprising: stepwise varying within a range.

That is, in the above aspect of the present invention by varying the rotational speed of the tub in the drying process step to facilitate the movement of the laundry in the tub. As the rotational speed of the tub is varied stepwise or discontinuously, the centrifugal force applied to the laundry is changed, so that the movement of the laundry can be more facilitated than when rotating at a constant speed.

In addition, it is possible to further promote the movement of the laundry by repeatedly performing the variable step.

In addition, the step may include a first step of maintaining the rotational speed of the tub at a minimum speed within the range; And a second step of maintaining the rotation speed of the tub at the maximum speed within the range for a predetermined time. That is, the rotational speed can be varied by two stages of the minimum speed or the maximum speed, thereby maximizing the change in the centrifugal force, thereby further promoting the movement of the laundry.

Further, in this step, the rotational speed of the tub can be varied in n steps between the lowest speed and the maximum speed, and each speed step can be maintained for a predetermined time. At this time, the time each step is maintained may be the same or different from each other. If the rotation speed of the tub is too slow, the movement of the laundry is less, if too large, the centrifugal force is excessively applied to the laundry so that the laundry is in close contact with each other, hot air is not evenly transmitted. That is, there is a proper speed according to the laundry, which is difficult to determine in advance and difficult to measure using a separate sensing device. Consistent or similar steps can be present, allowing more efficient supply of hot air to the laundry.

As an example, the tub in the step may be varied at a speed of six steps. And, the tub accelerated in the sixth step at the minimum speed can be reduced to the minimum speed again to repeat the acceleration step.

On the other hand, the air volume of the air supplied to the tub in the step can be increased or decreased. Due to the variable air volume there is a difference in the pressure applied to the laundry it is possible to further promote the movement of the laundry.

In addition, the air volume may be increased or decreased at the same period as the rotation speed variable period, and the air volume may increase as the rotation speed of the tub increases.

In some cases, a selection button may be added to the dryer body, and the range of the rotation speed may be changed in accordance with the selected button. That is, when the amount of laundry is large, the rotational speed range can be moved at a higher speed, and when the amount of the laundry is small, the rotational speed can be moved at a lower speed to further optimize the rotational speed according to the laundry.

This may be automatically measured through the quantity detection means provided in the dryer body as well as the selection button.

According to the aspects of the present invention having the configuration as described above, since the hot air can be more evenly transmitted to the laundry, the drying efficiency is improved, and thus the drying time and energy consumption can be shortened.

1 is a perspective view showing the appearance of the clothes dryer.
Figure 2 is an internal structure showing the inside of the clothes dryer.
Figure 3 (a) is a graph showing a change in the tub rotation speed with time according to an embodiment of the clothes dryer control method according to the present invention.
Figure 3 (b) is a graph showing a change in the air volume with time according to an embodiment of the clothes dryer control method according to the present invention.
Figure 4 is a schematic diagram showing the movement according to the speed of the bulky dry object inside the tub.
5 is a graph showing the degree of drying the drying object according to the tub rotation speed and the speed change cycle.
Figure 6 is a graph showing the experimental results of measuring the moisture content of the drying object according to the rotational speed of the tub.
7 is a graph showing a change in the tub rotation speed with time according to another embodiment of the clothes dryer control method according to the present invention.
8 is a graph illustrating a change in power consumption according to a change in rotational speed.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described in detail an embodiment of the dryer according to the present invention.

Hereinafter, in order to describe a dryer according to an embodiment of the present invention, a front loading type, an electric type, and an exhaust type dryer will be described as examples. However, the present invention is not limited thereto, and of course, the present invention may be applied to a top loading method, a gas type, a condensation type dryer, or the like.

1, an embodiment of a clothes dryer according to the present invention is shown. The clothes dryer 100 includes a cabinet 101 constituting an external appearance of the apparatus, and a front surface of the cabinet 101 is formed with a clothes inlet 102 for introducing clothes to be dried into the cabinet 101. do. The clothes inlet 102 is opened and closed by a door 103, and an operation panel 105 in which various operation buttons for operating the dryer are disposed above the clothes inlet 102, and the operation panel ( One side of the 105 is provided with a drawer cover (104).

2 is a cross-sectional view schematically showing the internal structure of the clothes dryer 100, a cylindrical tub 110 is rotatably mounted inside the cabinet 101, the front lower side of the tub 110 The air intake passage 130 in communication with the tub 110 is formed.

The lower part of the cabinet 101 is provided with a drive motor 136, and has a rotating shaft. A pulley is connected to the rotating shaft, and a belt 137 connects the outer surface of the pulley and the tub. Accordingly, the rotational motion generated by the driving motor is transmitted to the tub through the belt, and the tub is rotated, and the drying object accommodated therein is rotated through the rotational movement of the tub 110, and the drying object is In the tub 117 it will flow.

Hot air supply path 150 is formed on the rear of the cabinet. The air outside the clothes dryer enters the cabinet 101, passes through the heater 152, changes into hot air, and is discharged into the tub 117 through the heat pool supply path 150.

The hot air supplied into the tub is dried by evaporating moisture of the object to be dried and exits the tub through the air suction path 130 by the blowing fan 134 and is discharged to the outside of the cabinet through the exhaust duct 135. .

Referring to FIG. 3, in one embodiment of the method for controlling a clothes dryer according to the present invention, the drying speed of the laundry is controlled to be periodically changed from the first speed, the minimum speed, to the second speed, the maximum speed. Doing. In this embodiment, the minimum speed is set to 50 rpm, the maximum speed is set to 80 rpm.

For example, when 3 ~ 5kg of clothes put in the dryer to rotate the object may be in close contact with the tub or separated from the tub may remain in the air floating. During this process, the object to be dried is pushed to the periphery of the rotary shaft of the tub by centrifugal force to form a space or a gap. Since the space between the objects to be formed is formed so that the hot air passes smoothly between them and heat transfer is good, it is advantageous for the drying performance. Therefore, it is possible to uniformly dry the inside of the object to be dried by the hot air at such intervals. will be.

However, in the case of bulky large-scale dry objects, the movement in the tub is different from general dry objects in which the volume is small. In the case of bulky large-scale dry objects such as duvets, there is not enough free space compared to the space in the tub. In addition, since it is not a plurality of separate drying objects, but one drying object, it is easy to aggregate without being separated from each other in the tub. Therefore, even when subjected to centrifugal force due to the tub rotation as shown in Fig. 4 (a), it is not easy to form a space or spacing by the object to be pushed to the periphery near the extension line of the tub rotation axis. Therefore, since it is difficult to form a space for the hot air to pass through, it is difficult to uniformly dry the interior of the object to be dried. In particular, when folded in the tub, such as futons, because it is difficult to unfold, even when the drying is completed, there is a case where the moisture content is not dried even if the folded portion.

Therefore, in the above embodiment, the laundry is repeatedly aggregated and loosened by varying the rotational speed of the tub so that hot air is evenly transmitted.

When the tub is rotated at the maximum speed of 80 rpm, in the case of a small general drying object, the tub is in close contact with the side of the tub and the effect of drying is reduced. However, in the case of a large-capacity dry object such as a large duvet, as shown in (b) of FIG. 4, the object to be dried near the extension line of the rotary shaft of the tub is formed by centrifugal force to form a space or a gap. Accordingly, as shown in (b) of FIG. 4, the hot air smoothly passes through the spaces between the objects to be dried (such as a blanket), so that heat transfer is performed well, and thus, the interiors of the objects to be dried may be uniformly dried.

On the other hand, in the case of a single large-capacity drying object such as a blanket, the folded portion is sometimes expanded by centrifugal force due to the tub rotation at the maximum speed when it is rotated and swelled by the flow of hot air supplied into the tub. It may also spread. Figure 4 (c) shows this swelling up the drying object. Therefore, even the folded portion of the drying object can be easily unfolded. Thereby, drying can take place evenly. However, the state as shown in FIG. 4C is not continuous. Because the tub continues to rotate, the position or posture of the object to be dried may be changed again as shown in FIG.

On the other hand, as described above, the rotational speed of the tub is changed periodically from the lowest speed to the maximum speed as shown in Fig. 3 (a). Referring to Figure 3 (a), the rotational speed of the tub is changing with a constant period of 10 seconds from 50rpm minimum speed in a single direction to 80rpm maximum speed.

Changing the rotational speed of the tub from the lowest speed to the maximum speed with a constant period of time increases the chance of contacting the hot air to the interior of the drying object by continuously drying the bulky large drying object at the maximum speed. Although there is an advantage, there is an disadvantage in that the possibility of damage to the drying object is increased by friction with the inner wall of the tub, and it is more advantageous for drying to continuously change the position or position of the drying object. This is to increase the movement of the object to be built.

The rotation speed of the tub is changed by controlling the drive motor 136.

Figure 5 shows the degree of drying according to the rotational speed of the tub when drying a large amount of drying objects as described above. The dry object used in FIG. 5 is bulky and monolithic like a futon, and thus is easily folded inside the tub. The point measured in FIG. 5 is a point where it is difficult to dry well because it is folded in the tub and placed in the middle in the case of a quilt, which is a bulky object. This is because it is possible to measure whether the object to be dried is dried uniformly. In FIG. 5, the right square indicates the moisture content (FMC) range of the drying object after drying. In general, the degree of drying is 5% of moisture content. Referring to the graph on the left side of Figure 5, when measured at the same time, it was possible to obtain a degree of drying of about 5% of the moisture content at the target period of change of the tub rotation speed is 10 seconds and the tub rotation speed is near 80rpm. Of course, increasing the drying time can reach a moisture content of 5% even at a lower speed than 80 rpm, unlike in Figure 5, but in this experiment was measured the fastest optimization at the same time.

Figure 6 contrasts the case of drying a large amount of dry objects only at the lowest speed and the case of drying when changing the rotational speed of the tub from the minimum speed to the maximum speed as in the present invention. More specifically, FIG. 6 shows a case in which a dry object is folded in a tub and placed in the center of the tub in order to determine whether the dry object is uniformly dried in several experiments. After the completion of the water content is measured. Referring to FIG. 6, when a large amount of a dry object such as a blanket was dried while maintaining a constant speed, the water content of the spot which was folded inside the tub and placed in the center was difficult to be dried was distributed in a section between 27 to 35%. However, as in the above embodiment, the rotational speed of the tub was periodically changed from 50 rpm to 80 rpm in a single direction, and when dried, the target result was almost uniformly distributed around 5% of the water content.

Therefore, based on the results as described above, when controlling the clothes dryer as in the above embodiment, even in the case of a large volume of a large dry object, the dry object can be changed in position or posture in the tub to dry the object It allows to dry uniformly and completely, and shows better drying performance than drying only at the lowest speed.

On the other hand, in the embodiment it is possible to control the clothes dryer to increase or decrease the amount of air supplied to the tub while the rotational speed of the tub is periodically changed from the minimum speed to the maximum speed. This control method is illustrated in FIG.

Referring to (b) of FIG. 3, the air volume of the hot air supplied into the tub is increased and decreased periodically in association with the cycle of speed change. Specifically, the air volume is increased when the tub speed is the maximum speed to be a high air volume (Ah) and is reduced at the minimum speed to be a low air volume (An). The control of the air volume is achieved by controlling the blowing fan 140 described above. That is, it is preferable that the controller for controlling the above-described driving motor and the blowing fan is provided in the clothes dryer. Accordingly, the drive motor and the blower fan may be interlocked by the controller to periodically change the tub rotation speed and the amount of air supplied to the tub.

Changing the air volume according to the tub rotation speed by controlling the air volume as described above, to supply a sufficiently high temperature air when a gap or space is formed in the center portion of the large-scale drying object at the maximum speed, the drying time is shortened To do so. In addition, when the gap or space is reduced at the lowest speed and hot air is difficult to penetrate, the supply of hot air may be reduced to reduce the amount of heat to be supplied to the tub. As a result, a power consumption reduction effect may occur. In addition, according to the change in the wind pressure to further promote the behavior of the laundry will help to improve the dry uniformity.

On the other hand, the embodiment may allow the user to select a drying method in which the rotational speed of the tub periodically changes to the maximum speed in advance when the volume of the drying object is large.

In this case, the user is provided with a selection means for allowing the user to select a drying method in which the rotational speed of the tub is periodically changed to the maximum speed in advance. More specifically, when the user operates the operation panel 105 to use the clothes dryer, the operation panel 105 is provided with a guide display such as 'large capacity drying' or 'quilt drying' in advance. In this way, the rotational speed of the tub into which the information on the amount of input is input can be adjusted accordingly. That is, when a large amount of laundry is added, the minimum speed and the maximum speed may be further increased, and when a small amount of laundry is added, the minimum speed and the maximum speed may be further reduced.

By allowing the user to select the drying method in advance as described above, it is possible to change the drying method between the drying object of the general capacity and the drying object of a large capacity, thereby improving the user's convenience, and the drying performance is also effective according to the drying object. Can be improved.

In the above embodiment, the rotational speed of the tub is varied in two stages, the lowest speed and the maximum speed, but is not necessarily limited thereto, and may be changed in more granular steps.

That is, as shown in FIG. 7, the minimum speed and the maximum speed may be divided into a plurality of stages, and the rotation speed may be increased step by step from the lowest to the maximum. In Figure 7 it is configured to vary in six steps.

8 is a graph showing the power consumption when the drying stroke is performed while varying the rotational speed at a single speed, two speeds, and six speeds. In the case of a single speed, 50rpm shows the lowest power consumption.If the rotation speed is lower than that, the time required for drying increases, so that the overall power consumption increases, and if it is higher, the power consumption consumed by the high speed rotation increases, Power consumption is increased.

The lowest power consumption is achieved when the minimum speed is 46rpm and the maximum speed is 60rpm in the two-speed rotation speed.The lowest speed is 40rpm, the maximum speed is 60rpm and the medium speed is 44rpm, 48rpm, 52rpm when the six-speed rotation speed is set. At 58rpm, it shows the lowest power consumption.

In any case, it can be seen that the variable power control to have a rotational speed of six stages lower power consumption than the other cases.

100: clothes dryer 101: cabinet
102: clothing opening 103: door
104: drawer cover 105: operation panel
110: Tub 130: air intake
134: blower 136: drive motor
138: drive shaft 140: blowing fan
150: hot air supply passage 152: heater

Claims (10)

A control method of a clothes dryer for performing a drying stroke while rotating a tub rotatably mounted in a cabinet,
Control method of the clothes dryer comprising the step of varying the rotational speed of the tub in a predetermined range in the drying stroke. The method of claim 1,
The control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that the step is performed repeatedly. The method of claim 1,
The step is
A first step of maintaining the rotational speed of the tub at a minimum speed within the range; And
And a second step of maintaining the rotational speed of the tub at the maximum speed within the range for a predetermined time. The method of claim 1,
The rotation speed of the tub in the step is a control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that the variable in n steps between the maximum speed and the minimum speed. The method of claim 4, wherein
Each speed step is maintained for a predetermined time. The method of claim 4, wherein
In the step, the tub control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that variable at a speed of six steps. The method of claim 6,
The control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that the step is performed repeatedly. The method of claim 1,
Control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that for increasing the amount of air supplied to the tub in the step. The method of claim 8,
The airflow control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that the increase and decrease in the same period as the variable rotation speed cycle. 10. The method of claim 9,
The air flow rate control method of the clothes dryer, characterized in that the higher the rotational speed of the tub.

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