Stoppage Noise Reduction of Reciprocating Compressors

Nowadays, a quiet working and living environment is very important to people, therefore makers of home appliances, who tightly compete with each other, wage war on every decibel. As a result, methods of decreasing noise pollution have become a popular topic, attracting the attention of researchers. This article studies the braking of reciprocating compressors and its impact on the additional noise and vibrations at the stoppage. The manuscript explains the nature of these undesirable phenomena and proposes solutions to decrease them. The author analyzed conventional solutions and experimentally checked them. The results of these experiments proved that considered noise decreasing techniques are not applicable to the developing device, thus a new method has to be proposed. The author proposed several new techniques of compressor braking and checked them experimentally. Based on the analysis of these experiments, the method with better performance was selected for further study and improvements. The main innovation of the proposed method is the usage of exact mechanical position of the rotor to start braking and exclude reverse rotation of the piston, which produces noise. This article demonstrates that the proposed method eliminates additional noise and vibrations at the stoppage of reciprocating compressors, therefore, it is recommended for use in new motor drives. Taking into account the significant improvement of the acoustic profile of the proposed braking algorithm, it was included in the control algorithm of reciprocating compressors in mass production.