Water pad

Abstract

A water pad is disclosed to include a closed fluid impervious flexible envelope, which defines therein a closed chamber and has a pressure inside within the range from a negative to balance with the atmospheric pressure, a soft, elastic inner pad, which is accommodated in the closed chamber inside the closed fluid impervious flexible envelope, said inner pad has open cells, a fluid filled in the open cells in the inner pad, and a buffering space defined within the closed chamber inside the closed fluid impervious flexible envelope around the inner pad for receiving the fluid when the fluid is forced out of the inner pad upon a force of the external pressure. The water pad can be made in different forms for use as hot/cold compress pad, seat cushion, water mattress, medical mattress, warm-keeping pad, mouse pad, etc.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates generally to a pad and more particularly, to water pad, which does not expand or become hard when compressed. [0003] 2. Description of the Related Art [0004] People may use different pads, such as bed pad, seat pad, pillow pad, hot compress pad, cold compress pad, eye pad, brassiere pad, etc. in different places for different purposes. [0005] A pad may be simply formed of a foamed material, or filled up with a fluid or stuffing material. Basically, a pad has a pad body and an outer covering or bag covering the pad body. For containing a fluid, the bag must be waterproof and well sealed to prevent leakage. [0006] Actually, water is the cheapest environment protective natural cooling agent of high specific heat. Therefore, water is intensively used in cold compress, hot compress, or fluid pad for cold / hot compress. However, due to the force of the gravity, the fluid in a conventional flui...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] The present invention has been accomplished under the circumstances in view. According to one aspect of the present invention, the water pad comprises a closed fluid impervious flexible envelope, said closed fluid impervious flexible envelope defining therein a closed chamber and having a pressure inside within the range from a negative to balance with the atmospheric pressure, an inner pad made out of a soft and elastic material and accommodated in the closed chamber inside said closed fluid impervious flexible envelope, said inner pad having a plurality of open cells; a fluid filled in the open cells in said inner pad; and a buffering space defined within said closed chamber inside said closed fluid impervious flexible envelop for receiving said fluid when said fluid is forced out of said inner pad upon a force of the external pressure.

Problems solved by technology

However, due to the force of the gravity, the fluid in a conventional fluid pad always flows toward the bottom, causing uneven distribution of the fluid in the fluid pad.

When used for cold / hot compress, it is difficult to retain the fluid to the desired place.

When a conventional fluid pad is used for sitting, the fluid works as a means to transmit pressure, causing the fluid pad to expand and to become hard.

Thus, the contact pressure is increased and unstably floating.

However, dividing the fluid pad into multiple independent chambers can only partially control the problem of vertical flow of the fluid, the fluid in every independent chamber still cannot against the gravity and will flow to the bottom of each chamber respectively.

The use of the thickener cannot change the characteristic of the fluid but simply detain the time in which the fluid flows toward the bottom, providing no help in support.

Further, the use of silicon rubber greatly increases the cost.

Therefore, it is not an efficient design, i.e., twice the work with half of results.

This is the common problem of the conventional fluid pads.

Which causes an unstable support and high contact pressure.

The answer is “insufficient buffering space in the fluid pad”.

Actually, the buffering space defined in the bag according to U.S. Pat. No. 3,611,455 is insufficient.

At this time, the fluid supports the major part of the user's weight, therefore, it is unstable to sit the body on the fluid.

Further, column 3, lines 43˜47 of the specification and FIG. 3 of the annexed drawings also indicate the problem of insufficient buffering space.

When the user moves the body slightly at this time, the fluid will be forced to deform the fluid pad, and the body becomes unstably supported on the fluid pad.

So, the problems of high contact pressure and unstable support are all caused by the insufficiency of the inside buffering space.

Except the aforesaid drawbacks, U.S. Pat. No. 3,611,455 still has other problems.

This arrangement reduces the enthalpy and lowers the support stability.

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