• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.7-15
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• 2018

We propose a method for evaluating sound quality quantitatively to develop high-level home appliances (HA). Generally, a refrigerator has diverse movable parts such as slider, drawer, and folding shelf. Therefore, an engineering treatment to control the noise quality is considered as one of key technologies for a higher level refrigerator. Among the movable parts, we have selected a folding shelf as an example, which is commonly setup inside of a home refrigerator for increasing space convenience, to control the noise quality. However, it is known that its noise level is very high comparing to other movable parts when folding or unfolding actions. In order to evaluate and compare the noise quality, we have tested different eighteen models, and have suggested an impact sound quality index (ISQI) based on subjective evaluation data obtained experimentally by thirty two evaluators. The ISQI was formulated using three sound quality elements (noise peak, raising time, impact duration) to determine psycho-acoustic properties. Through this work, we developed an evaluating process and ISQI that was verified the usefulness by comparing the test results of personal perceptions given by evaluators with the prediction value of ISQI. We showed a good relations between them, so we believe that the proposed method and ISQI can be utilized to control of the noise quality of HA effectively.