Measuring and testing – Vibration – Sensing apparatus
Reexamination Certificate
2000-08-30
2001-12-25
Williams, Hezron (Department: 2856)
Measuring and testing
Vibration
Sensing apparatus
C073S587000, C073S660000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06332362
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to device and method for detecting defect in an air conditioner, and more particularly, device and method for detecting anomaly of an air conditioner by using the acoustic emission method.
2. Background of the Related Art
The air conditioner, maintaining a room temperature at a desired level, has a refrigerant compressor essentially required for compression of the refrigerant in conversion of a phase of the refrigerant. What gives the most fatal influence to an anomaly of the air conditioner in whole is the compressor.
FIG. 1
illustrates a related art outdoor unit of an air conditioner.
Referring to
FIG. 1
, there is a compressor
100
mounted on a base plate
18
between a front casing and a rear casing
10
and
12
of the outdoor unit. The refrigerant compressed in such a compressor is passed through a phase change as the refrigerant discharges a heat at a heat exchanger
14
, and supplied to an indoor unit(not shown).
A system of the related art compressor
100
in an air conditioner will be explained with reference to
FIGS. 2 and 3
. As shown, the compressor
100
is provided with a case
101
having a built in mechanism for compressing the refrigerant, and an accumulator
103
for supplying the refrigerant into the compressor. Within the case
101
, there is a motor
102
for generating a power for compressing the refrigerant and a compression part for compressing the refrigerant by using the power generated at the motor. The compression part has a cylinder
105
with a suction hole
104
, and a compression chamber
108
between an upper and lower bearings
106
and
107
. In the compression chamber
108
, there is an eccentric shaft
109
rotatably fixed in the compression chamber
108
as shown in FIG.
3
. And, on the eccentric shaft
109
, there is a rolling piston
110
mounted thereon for making continuous contact to an inside surface of the compression chamber
108
.
In such a system, when the power is applied to the compressor, the motor
102
in the case
101
comes into operation, to rotate the eccentric shaft
109
, when the rolling piston
110
rotates along an inside wall of the compression chamber
108
, to an outside diameter of which rolling piston
110
a vane
111
elastically fitted in the cylinder
105
by a spring
112
is brought into contact periodically, to draw the refrigerant from the accumulator
103
into the compression chamber
108
through the suction hole
104
in the cylinder
105
. The refrigerant drawn thus is compressed as the rolling piston
110
rotates, and discharged to outside of the compressor through an outlet. Being an important part a basic performance of a refrigerating cycle relies thereon, a defective compressor gives a fatal influence to entire air conditioner. And, this influence gives a fatal influence to defects of entire air conditioner actually, an inspection of the compressor itself is very important. Since the detect in the compressor itself directly affects to the detect in the air conditioner itself actually, the detect in the compressor is a criterion for determining a detect in the air conditioner. However, determination of the defect in the compressor itself only from mechanism by an outer appearance is not easy. And, what is important is determination of detect in the air conditioner itself actually, it is a right approach in determination of the detect in the air conditioner that the determination of defect is only made in a state the compressor is assembled to complete an air conditioner.
A related art method for determining a detect in a completed air conditioner on the whole will be reviewed, briefly. The most primary established method is to determine the defect an air conditioner from noise and vibration relying on auditory and visual senses of a skilled worker after putting a completed air conditioner into a rated power operation on an air conditioner production line. However, since this sense based method is influenced from an environment of the production line and the inspector's subjective view, reliability of the method can not be assured, fully. And, because of the problem of this sense based determination method, a method is widely used, in which an operational current is sensed by using a sensing device on a transfer line of the air conditioner, and the detect in the air conditioner is determined based on the sensed current.
However, this current sensing method has disadvantage in that a right determination of the air conditioner is impossible in cases of abnormal wear and the like of components coming from unbalance of materials, machining error and/or assembly error, or the like of components because the current sensing method is based on currents for general factors, such as low compression, reverse discharge, electronic noise, abnormal noise, low input, and the like of the compressor in case of two phases. For example, a right determination of detect in the air conditioner is not possible in cases the defect comes from a machining or assembly error of various components in the compressor. To cope with this, the inventor discloses a patent in Korean Patent publication No. 192251 dated Jun. 15, '99 in which a method for determining anomaly of a compressor by using an acoustic emission method is suggested. However, since this method has a precondition of driving, not the air conditioner itself, but the compressor only, this method is less effective in determining detect in the whole air conditioner having the compressor assembled thereto.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to device and method for detecting anomaly of an air conditioner from acoustic emission that substantially obviates one or more of the problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
An object of the present invention is to provide device and method for detecting a defect in an air conditioner from acoustic emission, which can determine defect in an air conditioner in a state assembly of the air conditioner, inclusive of a compressor, is completed.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the purpose of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the method for detecting anomaly of an air conditioner, includes the steps of (1) detecting an acoustic emission signal from a compressor in the air conditioner during operation of the air conditioner, (2) detecting parameters of particular components from the detected acoustic emission signal, and (3) comparing the detected parameters to respective references, to determine anomaly of the air conditioner on the whole.
The step (1) is carried out after a preset time period is passed since the air conditioner is operated at a rated power, which assure to determine anomaly of the air conditioner only when the air conditioner is operative at a rated power.
The parameter detected in the step (2) is an AE absolute average which is a sum of signals of a frequency divided by a number of entire data, or an AE energy which is a square root of a sum of squares of the measured AE signals. It can be known from experiments that these parameters are the most basic elements for determining anomaly of the air conditioner, and the determination based on these parameters permits the most reliable determination.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for detecting anomaly of an air conditioner, including the steps of (1) detecting an acoustic emission signal from a compressor in the air conditioner during operation of the air conditioner, (2) comparing an AE absolute average to a reference
Kang Myoung Chang
Kim Jun Ha
Kim Jung Suk
Lee Kam Gyu
Fleshner & Kim LLP
LG Electronics Inc.
Saint-Surin Jacques
Williams Hezron
LandOfFree
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