Noise test and control for household refrigerator compressor

Sound comfort becomes more and more important in residential houses. Home appliance is one of the main sources of indoor noise. Noise emission is a distinctive feature for the selection of the home appliances. Noise levels in household appliances are increasingly attracting attention from manufacturers and customers. Refrigerators as common appliances used by most families run continuously all day. It produces a lot of noises. National standards have published severe rules on the acceptable noise levels, and noise-free operation becomes the preferred choice of customers in the refrigerators choosing. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the noise level of refrigerator. In this paper, the noise control study has been carried on a type of air-cooled household refrigerator. The noise level of the refrigerator was tested under different operation conditions at first. Then the maximum sound pressure level and noise characters were obtained by analyse the spectra of the noises. Test data shown that the refrigerator noises are mainly composed of compressor and fan noises. According to the characteristics of the compressor and fan noise, a method of using sound insulation board was proposed to reduce the compressor noise. Considering the actual installation restrictions and the compressor cooling demand, a kind of sound insulation board with holes was applied. Experimental studies indicated that the proposed noise control method can suppress the noise of the household refrigerator effectively.