Beverage Cup Closure with Rotatable Vent Seal to Reduce Leakage
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Solution Overview
Problem
Reusable beverage cups fail to maintain high temperatures and suffer from heat transfer issues, while both single-use and reusable cups experience leakage due to inadequate sealing, leading to spillage and wastage.
Innovation Solution
A closure system for beverage cups featuring a rotatable lid with a vented void that seals when closed, providing a more reliable seal and multiple vent locations to prevent blockage, along with a cam engagement and overmoulded sealing ridge for enhanced sealing and reduced wear.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Temperature
If a vent is provided in the lid to allow steam escape, then heat retention is improved, but the seal reliability deteriorates due to potential blockage and wear
Solution Approach 1:
The vent is divided into multiple separate vent holes instead of a single opening. This segmentation ensures that if one vent hole becomes blocked, others remain open to allow steam escape, thereby maintaining heat retention while improving overall seal reliability through redundancy
Solution Approach 2:
A seal member is introduced as an intermediary component between the lid and the vent holes. This seal member can be selectively positioned to open or close the vent holes, allowing controlled steam escape while maintaining a reliable seal when closed, thus resolving the contradiction between heat retention and seal reliability
2Device complexity
If a single vent location is provided, then device complexity is reduced, but reliability deteriorates due to complete blockage risk
Solution Approach 1:
The single vent is segmented into multiple vent holes distributed at different locations within the lid. This increases reliability by ensuring that complete blockage is unlikely, while the overall device complexity remains low because the vent holes are simple geometric features integrated into the lid structure without additional moving parts
Data Source
Figure 1A
Figure 1B
Figure 2A~2B
AI summary
A closure for a beverage cup. The closure comprises a lid having a drinking opening and a rotatable member in rotatable engagement with the lid. The rotatable member swivels laterally of the lid between an open and a closed position. The rotatable member being adapted to close the opening in the lid when the rotatable member is in a closed position. The closure also comprises a vent in the lid that vents into a void under the rotatable member. When the rotatable member is in the closed position the void is sealed to an outside of the closure and when the rotatable member is in the open position the void is open to the outside.