Simulation And Opitimization Research On Paper Feeding Mechanism Considering Air Resistance

Copying machines, printers and fax machines have been widely used in daily life in order to increase the efficiency of office work. However, manufacturers are suffering paper jam, abnormal vibration and over-noise from theses office equipment. Recently, the well-known office equipment producers such as Canon and Ricoh have been evolved in a lot of research work in this field. Meanwhile, the environment label requirement issued by China Environment Protection Agency in 2005 also states that the noise of non-impact copying machines should be lower than 55dB. It is commonly believed that the reason of these problems is the irrational design of paper feeding mechanism which cannot offer a reasonable layout such as picking rollers, feeding rollers and guide. An accurate simulation model can provide scientific guidance for paper feeding mechanism to shorten the product develop cycle and save the cost.The current research indicates that there are multiple effects acting on paper during the feeding process such as friction, temperature, air flow and impact. As a result, it is difficult to construct simulation models while considering the above factors. Therefore, most research is focusing on static property of paper and dynamic properties during paper feeding process. Research considering these effects to paper feeding process is quite limited. Also, because of the light-weight and big area of paper itself, under the condition of high speed movement, air resistance could be one of the key factors influencing paper shape and form. Obviously, the accuracy of previous simulation models are not enough due to neglect the air resistance effect, only dealing the simulation environment as vacuum.In order to simulate a real paper movement status in office equipment and further propose an optimized design for paper feeding mechanism, firstly, based on the fluid continuous equation and Navier-Stokes equation, the air resistance distribution equation has been deduced. Applying this equation into RecurDyn user subroutine modulus, simulation process considering air resistance effect could be conducted through second-development to the software.Simulation considering air resistance has been carried out after deciding the critical parameters in paper feeding mechanism. Comparing the simulation result with experiment result including the falling down velocity of paper end and impact force between guide plates, the calculation accuracy can be verified. The result demonstrated that the new simulation model can enhance the simulation accuracy greatly, whose error is controlled fewer than 5%.Based on the simulation model considering air resistance, the position parameters of guide plates have been optimized with the impact force between paper and guide as objective function. The result after optimization shows that the impact force can be reduced to a great extend, which can suppress the noise in office equipment. The research can help solve the problems of paper jam, vibration and over-noise.