Refrigerator

Details Refrigerator Refrigerator

1995-10-23

1998-10-20

Tanner, Harry B.

Refrigeration

Automatic control

Of external fluid or means

62408, F25D 1708

Patent

active

058229981

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
RELATED INVENTION

This invention is related to the inventions disclosed in International Applications PCT/KR95/00063 and PCT/KR95/00064, the national phase of which was filed in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office on Nov. 13, 1995 as Ser. Nos. 08/553,443 and 08/545,856, respectively.


BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a refrigerator, and more particularly to a refrigerator which has a cool air passage capable of distributing cool air into a refrigerating compartment.
As shown in FIG. 1, a conventional refrigerator is formed by mounting a freezing compartment door 6 and a refrigerating compartment door 7 on a refrigerator body 4 of a thermally insulated structure forming a freezing compartment 2 and a refrigerating compartment 3 which are partitioned from each other by an intermediate partition wall 1.
A compressor 11 is installed in a motor compartment 11M that is positioned under the refrigerating compartment 3, a condenser and capillary tube (not shown) are mounted in the interior of the body 4 or placed in the machine compartment 11M, and an evaporator 12 is mounted on the rear wall of the freezing compartment 2. The components are connected to each other by refrigerant tubes (not shown) to perform a refrigeration cycle.
A fan 13 for forcing cool air from the evaporator 12 into the freezing compartment 2 and the refrigerating compartment 3, is disposed above the evaporator 12. In order to guide the flow of the cool air, a grill 14 is placed before the fan 13 and a cool air duct 15a is disposed at the rear wall of the refrigerating compartment 3. Here, numeral 19 indicates a control damper for controlling the quantity of cool air which is introduced into the refrigerating compartment 3, and numeral 8 indicates shelves for receiving food items.
As a method for supplying cool air to the refrigerating compartment, a conventional refrigerator generally adopts a shelf-by-shelf cool air discharge method. As shown in FIG. 2, in this method a plurality of cool air discharge openings 16a, which is provided for several areas partitioned by the shelves 8, is arranged in the up-and-down direction on the cool air duct 15a, so cool air is discharged towards the front into areas formed by the plurality of shelves 8.
In the above shelf-by-shelf cool air discharge to method, uniform distribution of the cooled air is not achieved since areas in the direct path of the blown air receives more cooled air than the remote regions of each area. Arrangement of the food items further contributes to this problem. As an example, a bulky food item near a set of cool air discharge openings blocks the flow of air thus such an area receives less cooled air. A further problem exists in that since the cool air discharge openings 16a are perpendicular to the flow direction of cool air going through the cool air duct 15a, only a small portion of the cool air from the evaporator 12 passes through the upper cool air discharge openings, but most of the cool air flows down through the cool air duct 15a and discharges into the refrigerating compartment 3 through the lowest cool air discharge openings 16a. Accordingly, food items on the upper shelves of the refrigerating compartment 3 can not keep a proper refrigerating temperature, whereas the food items on the lower shelves are overcooled. Another problem exists in that some newly stored food items may be at an initial temperature significantly higher than the temperature in the cooling compartment. In this case, a need arises for concentrating the cooled air flow to the warm/hot food items to effect rapid cooling as well as to avoid warming of the immediately surrounding food items. Conventional systems do not offer such a compensating means. Accordingly, the above-described situations contribute to an undesired condition in which there may exist a significant variation of temperatures throughout the cooling compartment.
In an attempt to distribute the cool air more evenly, a three-wall cool air discharging method has recently been developed. As shown in FIG. 3, a refrig

REFERENCES:
patent: 2907186 (1959-10-01), Barroero
patent: 5076070 (1991-12-01), Takushima et al.
patent: 5092136 (1992-03-01), Kang
patent: 5214936 (1993-06-01), Lim et al.

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