The improvement of outlet temperature distribution in the hair dryer and effects on drying rate

In addition to natural processes such as aging, hair care products are also important for hair health. Unbalanced nutrition, stress, excessive daylight, heavy metals and some chemicals damage the hair structure, so overuse of hair dryers also affects hair health negatively. It is crucial that your hair is not worn away while it is dried. Wet hair is more susceptible and deforms easily during drying. The high-temperature from the hair dryer causes damage to the hair. For this reason, it is necessary to optimize the heater, fan in the hair drier and air outlet temperature and flow rate parameters. In the thesis study, heat transfer and frictional loss of a smooth tube with spiral springs were investigated in the literature study for different geometric parameters such as diameter of spring, pitch of spring, number of springs and incline angle of the springs. An experimental study was carried out to determine the effectiveness of the air flow rate, drying distance and heater power parameters on the drying rate and the empirical correlations was established. At the same time, HAD analyzes were carried out to investigate the effect of the heater diameter on the homogeneous temperature distribution at the hair dryer outlet.In the In this study, a hair drier with a 41 mm diameter heater was taken as an example and HAD analysis was performed and compared with experimental data, the optimization of the heater diameter was performed using the determined turbulence model and the number of mesh elements. In the HAD analyzes, the effect of the heater diameter on the temperature distribution was investigated by keeping the number of cycles and heater power parameters constant. The temperature distribution maps of the heaters which were 41 mm, 44 mm, 46 mm, 48 mm, 50 mm and 52 mm, examined in the study. The purpose of this study is to create input for designing a hair dryer with less damage and high drying rate. As a result of the optimization research, performance tests with the heater were performed to verify the results of the HAD analyzes. According to the measurement results, a 10% improvement in drying rate was observed compared to the reference case.