Abstract: In electric pressure cookers, the lid cannot be opened until the inner pot temperature decreases and the internal pressure returns to normal after cooking completion. Based on the knowledge of thermodynamics, the air-cooled heat dissipation mode of electric pressure cooker was analyzed. By CFD simulation, the existing structure of the electric pressure cooker was simulated and analyzed. The results show that the air flow intensity on the opposite side to the air inlet of the existing air-cooled heat dissipation scheme is small, which leads to the slow cooling of the inner pot and long waiting time to open the lid. Based on the above analysis results, four optimization schemes are designed and simulated. By comparison, it is found that opening holes on the opposite side to the air inlet and preventing air from flowing out from the top can effectively reduce the temperature of the inner pot and ensure good overall temperature uniformity. The average temperatures of loop 1 and loop 2 are 347 K and 343 K respectively, which are optimized by about 5.7% and 4.2% compared with 368 K and 358 K of the original scheme. This can reduce the waiting time to open the lid and achieve better user experience.

Key words: Electric pressure cooker, Air-cooled heat dissipation, CFD, Thermal-fluid coupling