Collapsible Anchor With Pivot Arms For Sand Accumulation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional anchors are often heavy and bulky, making them difficult to store and transport, and they lack a mechanism to increase weight and resistance for secure anchoring.
Innovation Solution
A collapsible anchor system with pivotally coupled arms that can expand to receive sand or debris, featuring protrusions to dig into the surface and cavities to trap material, allowing for increased weight and resistance when in use, while compacting for easy storage and transport.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the anchor is made heavy and bulky to increase weight and resistance, then the anchoring capability is improved, but the ease of storage and transport deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The anchor employs collapsible arms that can dynamically change between an expanded configuration during anchoring and a collapsed configuration for storage and transport. This dynamic transformation allows the anchor to adapt its structure based on operational requirements, resolving the contradiction between needing weight/resistance during use and needing compactness for storage.
Solution Approach 2:
The anchor is divided into separable components including a body member and multiple arms that can be independently collapsed. This segmentation enables the anchor to be disassembled or compressed into a compact form for easy storage and transport, while maintaining full anchoring functionality when deployed.
2Reliability
If the anchor arms are expanded to increase weight and resistance, then the anchoring capability is improved, but the volume occupied during storage increases
Solution Approach 1:
The collapsed arms are positioned adjacent to and nested within the body member, allowing the anchor components to occupy minimal space during storage. The arms can be collapsed into a compact configuration that fits within or alongside the main body, significantly reducing the overall volume required for storage compared to a permanently expanded design.
3Volume of moving object
If the anchor uses a collapsible mechanism to reduce storage volume, then the ease of storage is improved, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The collapsible arms incorporate pivot points that enable simple rotational movement between collapsed and expanded states. This dynamic mechanism uses basic pivot joints rather than complex actuation systems, achieving volume reduction while maintaining relatively simple construction.
Solution Approach 2:
The collapse function is integrated directly into the arm structure itself, combining the positioning and collapse functions into a single structural element. This merging of functions reduces the need for separate mechanical components, thereby limiting the increase in device complexity while achieving the desired volume reduction.
Data Source
AI summary
An anchor system including an anchor having a body member and a first arm pivotally coupled to the body member. The first arm is movable between a closed position wherein the first arm is positioned adjacent to the body member and an open position wherein at least part of the first arm is spaced away from the body member. The system further includes a second arm pivotally coupled to the body member and movable between a closed position wherein the second arm is positioned adjacent to the body member and an open position wherein at least part of the second arm is spaced away from the body member. At least one of the first or second arms has a cavity that is exposed when the at least one of the first or second arms is in the open position. The at least one of the first or second arms includes a protrusion extending therefrom.