Grooved Lifter Design for Gentle Yet Effective Laundry Cleaning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional laundry treating appliances with rotating drums and lifters often compromise gentleness on laundry items while achieving effective cleaning, as the mechanical action required for cleaning also causes damage.
Innovation Solution
A lifter with grooves on its inner surface, designed to secure to the drum, allowing for a smaller, lower profile configuration that maintains high cleaning scores while reducing mechanical action, thus being gentler on laundry, as per the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers Performance Evaluation Procedures for Household Clothes Washers (AHAM HLW-1-2013).
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional lifters are used to achieve effective cleaning through mechanical action, then cleaning effectiveness is improved, but damage to laundry items increases
Solution Approach 1:
The lifter features a grooved inner surface with varying local properties - the grooves create localized high-mechanical-action zones for effective cleaning while the overall reduced lifter size limits the extent of harmful mechanical action. This local quality differentiation allows the lifter to provide targeted cleaning effectiveness while minimizing overall damage to laundry items.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If lifter size is reduced to decrease mechanical action and gentleness improvement, then gentleness on laundry is improved, but cleaning effectiveness may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The grooved inner surface creates localized zones of enhanced mechanical action within the reduced-size lifter. The grooves concentrate cleaning action in specific areas, allowing the smaller lifter to achieve cleaning scores comparable to larger lifters while maintaining overall gentleness through reduced total mechanical action.
Solution Approach 2:
The grooved surface segments the lifter's inner surface into multiple functional zones - the grooves themselves and the raised portions between them. This segmentation allows different areas to contribute to cleaning effectiveness while the overall reduced size and distributed action maintain gentleness on laundry items.
Data Source
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AI summary
A laundry treating appliance (10) having a tub with a tub interior that defines a liquid chamber, a rotatable drum (28) located within the liquid chamber and rotatable about a rotational axis that at least partially defines a treating chamber (30), and a lifter housing (50) carried by the drum (28) and located within the treating chamber (30).