Air-Filled Cavity Structural Component for Passive Body Cooling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Structural components for body protection and support often become sweaty due to restricted heat dissipation during physical activity, and existing cooling solutions require external energy or have limitations in effectiveness and duration.
Innovation Solution
A structural component with a flexibly deformable inner layer and a dimensionally stable outer layer, featuring an air-filled cavity with elastically deformable support elements and strategically placed ventilation openings, allowing for automatic and continuous air exchange and heat dissipation without external energy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the structural component maintains close and large-area contact with the body part, then protection and support function is improved, but heat dissipation is prevented causing sweaty discomfort
Solution Approach 1:
An air-filled cavity is introduced as an intermediary layer between the inner and outer layers of the structural component. This air cavity acts as a thermal insulator and mediator, allowing the component to maintain close contact with the body for protection while preventing direct heat transfer that causes sweating. The cavity space creates a buffer zone that manages thermal interaction between the body and the rigid outer layer.
Solution Approach 2:
The air-filled cavity is extracted or removed from the traditional solid-layer construction, creating a hollow space within the structural component. This extraction of material (replacing it with air) reduces thermal conductivity and allows heat to be trapped or managed within the cavity, preventing it from reaching the outer surface where it would cause discomfort.
2Temperature
If cooling functions are added to the structural component, then heat dissipation is improved, but external energy supply and additional expenditure are required
Solution Approach 1:
The structural component performs its own cooling function through the passive thermal insulation provided by the air-filled cavity. The component serves itself by trapping heat within the cavity through its own structural design, without requiring any external energy input, cooling systems, or additional active mechanisms. The air cavity automatically manages heat transfer based on the component's movement and body heat generation.
3Stability of the object's composition
If a rigid outer layer is used for dimensional stability, then structural integrity is improved, but comfort and heat management deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The structural component uses different materials with different properties for different layers: a flexible inner layer for comfort and body conformity, a rigid outer layer for dimensional stability and protection, and an air-filled cavity in between for thermal management. Each layer has optimized local quality suited to its specific function, creating a composite structure that balances contradictory requirements.
Solution Approach 2:
The structural component is constructed as a composite of multiple materials and structures: flexible polymer inner layer, air-filled cavity, and rigid polymer outer layer. This composite construction allows each material to contribute its superior properties (flexibility, thermal insulation, rigidity) while the combination as a whole achieves the balanced performance needed for both comfort and structural integrity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The component achieves effective and continuous cooling by using the support elements as both spacers and actuators to pump air through ventilation openings, enhancing wearing comfort by dissipating heat passively throughout its use.
Implementation Method 1
A large number of elastically deformable support elements are arranged within this cavity, which maintain the cavity between the inner and outer layer and, due to their elastic deformability, enable a corresponding elastically restoring deformation of the inner layer in relation to the rigid or dimensionally stable outer layer
Implementation Method 2
the air present in the cavity can be temporarily displaced and escape into other areas of the cavity. In the case of elastic deformation, the inner layer and/or the support elements serve as a pump body and pump the air volume from one cell to the adjacent cell, whereby air exchange with the environment or atmosphere is built up including the ventilation opening(s)
Data Source
Figure 1~3
Figure 4
AI summary
The invention relates to a structural component (1) for the protection and/or support of a body part, comprising a flexibly deformable inner layer (12) facing the body part and a dimensionally stable outer layer (10), wherein the inner and outer layers (12, 10) enclose an air-filled cavity (13) which communicates with the environment via at least one ventilation opening and within which a plurality of elastically deformable support elements (11) are arranged, wherein the support elements (11) are integrally manufactured in one piece with the outer and inner layers (10, 12) and have a plurality of air passage openings (110) so that they form a plurality of communicating adjacent cells.which together form the air-filled cavity (13) and the cavity (13) communicates with the atmosphere via at least one common ventilation and exhaust opening or at least one separate ventilation and exhaust opening each, which are equipped with a valve (14, 15).