Article of 08.03.2015


Investigation of the textile's dynamic

The laundry care process is a very complex operation and cannot be described with the help of few mathematical formulas. To obtain a better understanding and the ability to simulate the procedures, the sub-processes are getting illuminated in the context of the cooperation between the three Universities of Berlin (Beuth, HTW, and TU) and BSH household GmbH.

Herbert Sinner in the Sinner's Circle describes the connection between the four main influential variables of the washing process (temperature, mechanics, time, chemistry).

Should one of these components be reduced, by saving time, for instance, at least one of the three remaining components must be increased in order to still get an equivalent washing result. This can be achieved, for example, by raising the mechanical aspects (e.g. increasing the textile's inner energy).

The basis of the textile's investigation is a three-dimensional capturing of the movement of the textile structure in a rotating drum. For this purpose, a glass washing machine was constructed and built at TU Berlin's department of Fluid System Dynamics, which enables the optical recording of the laundry's movement with a video camera from different points of view.

In the context of the researches good results can be reached, which provides a better understanding of the laundry's movement. Firstly, four characteristic kinds of movement are identified: Dropping, Rolling, Slipping and Docking. Using these movement types, the total movement of the analyzed norm towel can be described. Furthermore, the percentage of these components of the total movement are defined in relation to speed and direction of rotation. Moreover, with means of a tracking algorithm, the laundry can be analyzed and captured on the basis of footage.

Patents (DE102013215221A1, DE102013215219A1, and DE102013215218A1) protect these procedures.






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