Adaptability Design Method of In-ear Headphone Shells Based on Force Balance

CONG Xiaoyan; LIU Siyue; SHI Zhenjie; BU Lingguo; WANG Chunpeng

doi:10.19554/j.cnki.1001-3563.2025.24.013

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Packaging Engineering ›› 2025, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (24) : 155-170. DOI: 10.19554/j.cnki.1001-3563.2025.24.013

Industrial Design

Adaptability Design Method of In-ear Headphone Shells Based on Force Balance

CONG Xiaoyan¹, LIU Siyue¹, SHI Zhenjie¹, BU Lingguo², WANG Chunpeng^1,*

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Abstract

Adaptability design is important for wearable products. To solve the problem that improving the degree of adaptation will increase the production cost in the design of the in-ear headphone shell, the work aims to propose a new design method based on force balance. By conducting force analysis on the human ear-headphone system, the force situations of the system under various human motion scenarios were obtained. According to the principle of force balance, the shape design of the headphone shell was guided to form the key points of the headphone to contact the ear canal and generate the support force required to maintain the force balance of the headphone. Based on the degree of force balance of the headphone in the human ear system, the wearing adaptability was divided into eight levels. The key points corresponding to each adaptation level were also obtained through the study. The designers were only required to conduct support structure design for the headphone shell at the corresponding positions to meet the adaptation requirements. To verify the effectiveness of the design method, data from the subjects were collected to construct a three-dimensional model of the human ear. ANSYS software was used to perform finite element simulation analysis on the in-ear headphones on the market (user evaluation of adaptability was known) and the design scheme developed based on a force balance driven adaptability design method. The finite element analysis results indicated that the design of the support point of the headphone from the market was largely consistent with the required points of the force balance driven adaptability design method at equivalent adaptability levels. In addition, the design scheme guided by the proposed method had a uniform distribution of wearing stress and met the target requirements for adaptability. Therefore, the design method of in-ear headphone shell adaptability based on force balance can accurately achieve any target adaptability level without increasing production costs. It can reduce the experience dependence of previous design methods on designers' size application, reduce the iteration of size adjustment for adaptability in the product development process, and effectively shorten the product development cycle.

Key words

design method / finite element analysis / headphone shell design / adaptability / force balance

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CONG Xiaoyan, LIU Siyue, SHI Zhenjie, BU Lingguo, WANG Chunpeng. Adaptability Design Method of In-ear Headphone Shells Based on Force Balance[J]. Packaging Engineering. 2025, 46(24): 155-170 https://doi.org/10.19554/j.cnki.1001-3563.2025.24.013

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