Composite Pallet Assembly with Embedded Reinforcement
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The lack of a single international standard for pallets leads to substantial expenses in international trade, and traditional wood pallets pose bio-hazard risks and require costly treatments to comply with phytosanitary regulations, while alternative materials often involve complex and expensive manufacturing methods.
Innovation Solution
A pallet assembly using extruded or pultruded components made from inert materials, such as recycled plastics, with embedded multilayer composite strips for increased strength and stiffness, allowing for rapid assembly and disassembly, and featuring a lineal engagement stringer, stringer, and slat design with mechanical fasteners for secure attachment, which can handle heavier loads and resist environmental conditions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional wood pallets are used, then they provide adequate structural support, but they pose bio-hazard risks and require costly treatments to comply with phytosanitary regulations
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the material parameter from organic wood to inorganic recycled plastics, fundamentally altering the material's biological properties. This substitution eliminates the carrier function for invasive species while maintaining structural performance, achieving phytosanitary compliance without chemical treatments.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs composite construction by combining recycled plastic materials with reinforcement elements to create a pallet structure that achieves the structural reliability of traditional wood pallets while eliminating bio-hazard risks. The composite approach allows optimization of both strength and phytosanitary properties.
2Reliability
If wood pallets are treated to meet phytosanitary standards, then compliance is achieved, but manufacturing costs increase due to heating or fumigation processes
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the problematic treatment processes (heating, fumigation) from the manufacturing workflow by substituting the base material itself. Instead of treating wood to achieve compliance, the design uses recycled plastics that are inherently compliant, eliminating the need for additional processing steps and associated costs.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the material parameter from treatable wood to inherently compliant recycled plastic, eliminating the need for post-manufacturing treatments. This parameter change transfers phytosanitary compliance from a process attribute to an inherent material property, reducing manufacturing complexity and cost.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If alternative materials like plastic or metal are used instead of wood, then bio-hazard risks are eliminated, but manufacturing complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the material parameter to recycled plastics that can be extruded into standardized profiles, simplifying manufacturing. The use of inert, recyclable materials with consistent properties enables streamlined production processes compared to traditional wood working or complex metal fabrication.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses composite construction combining recycled plastic materials with embedded reinforcements to achieve the necessary structural performance. This composite approach allows the use of simpler manufacturing processes while maintaining strength requirements, avoiding the complexity of both traditional wood treatment and solid metal fabrication.
4Strength
If heavier loads are required beyond 1,000 kilograms, then additional structural reinforcement is needed, but pallet weight and manufacturing cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs composite construction by combining recycled plastic materials with reinforcement elements strategically positioned to maximize load-bearing capacity. This allows achieving higher strength requirements without proportionally increasing overall pallet weight, as the reinforcement is integrated efficiently into the structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by providing reinforcement only in specific areas where additional strength is needed for heavy loads, rather than uniformly increasing the entire pallet's mass. This targeted approach increases load capacity while minimizing weight increase, optimizing the strength-to-weight ratio for heavy-duty applications.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of a pallet assembly are disclosed including two engagement stringers having a plurality of perpendicular stringers therebetween and engaged, end to end, to each engagement stringer, and one or more inert support surfaces supported thereby. The one or more support surfaces are a plurality of top slats supported and held directly by the frame comprising the stringers and the engagement stringers. The top slats include a structure that is complementary to a feature defined by the frame and that allows the top slats to mate with and be held by the frame. The pallet assembly demands fasteners for assembling the frame; however, in at least one aspect, the pallet assembly of the present disclosure also demands fasteners for attaching the top slats to the frame. In another aspect, the stringers and the engagement stringers each comprise a multilayer composite strip or multiple multilayer composite strips.