Haier's Innovative Use of Altair HyperWorks to Eliminate Drop Damage in Air Conditioners

Haier Group is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of home appliances and consumer electronics. The company is the leader of its industry in China, where it is headquartered. Haier ships its products all across the globe and in more than 100 countries, so well-designed product packaging is crucial to the company’s ability to deliver products without damage to even the farthest destinations. While the company is known for its quality products, the air conditioners it manufactured were being damaged during transportation, leading to higher costs and delays in final product delivery.

Haier Group, a global leader in home appliances and consumer electronics, faced a significant challenge with its air conditioners. Despite being known for quality products, the air conditioners were frequently damaged during transportation, leading to increased costs and delivery delays. The company attempted to enhance the structure of its air conditioners and packaging to make them more resistant to drop damage by conducting physical drop tests. However, these tests significantly escalated the research-and-development costs and consumed an extraordinary amount of time. Moreover, the engineers could not easily observe the damage process as the collision between the product and the ground was an instantaneous event. They could only view the outcome but not the strains and shape changes during the fractions of seconds in which they happened. Consequently, Haier considered using excessive packaging materials, but the overall design strength of the package was insufficient.

To overcome this challenge, Haier engineers turned to HyperWorks tools from Altair to create a virtual simulation of a drop test that would provide extensive data on the stresses and strains involved. Virtual drop tests using HyperMesh for preprocessing and the RADIOSS solver were developed for two different types of air conditioners to gain better insights. For the first product tested, Haier engineers initially conducted numerous physical tests to collect data on the performance of the materials used in the packaging, such as honeycomb panels and EPS blocks. Then it simulated material tests with virtual models to calibrate the data. They tested honeycomb paper through elastic deformation, buckling, plastic collapse and brittle rupture of the product under axial compression. After obtaining the strain-stress curve from the physical model, the team simulated the honeycomb paper and reproduced the axial compression virtually. The virtual compression test curve showed very good conformity with the experimental physical test curve. For the second type of air conditioner, Haier engineers again prepared separate models for the air conditioner and the packaging and then employed RADIOSS in simulating a 0.8 meter drop on a corner of the package, with a beginning speed of 3.96 mm/ms.

• The use of HyperWorks tools brought about significant operational benefits for Haier. The reasons for parts failure could be found quickly and accurately. With HyperWorks postprocessing software, engineers could see every moment of the drop testing process and extract such numerical data as stress, strain and displacement to analyze the product’s behavior. Haier was able to use packaging and structural material more reasonably after the simulation. Once the reason for the failure was found, engineers could redesign the product in the appropriate way, reducing trial-and-error costs. Simulation with HyperWorks brought great efficiencies and savings to the redesign process. It helped reduce the huge amount of work involved in physical tests of the product and its packaging, making redesign more efficient and eliminating the costs of physical testing. The simulation was highly accurate, thanks to the capabilities of the RADIOSS solver.

• Drop Damage was eliminated
• Efficient use of packaging material
• Reduce costly physical testing