Decoupled floor underlayment
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing floor heating systems face challenges with uneven heating, stress imbalances, and increased risk of ceramic tile cracking due to differences in wiring intervals and solar irradiation across various building regions.
Innovation Solution
A decoupled floor underlayment with a multiple-layer composite structure, featuring a wiring layer with protrusion portions arranged in a staggered manner, allows for flexible wiring of heating pipes and cables, enhancing thermal insulation and preventing tile cracking.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If a fixed wiring interval is used for floor heating pipes, then the installation is simple, but it causes uneven heating and stress imbalances in different building regions
Solution Approach 1:
The underlayment transitions from a fixed, rigid structure to a dynamic, flexible structure with a wrinkled surface. The wrinkles can expand and contract to accommodate different wiring intervals and thermal expansion, allowing the system to adapt to varying heating requirements across different building regions while maintaining installation simplicity.
Solution Approach 2:
The underlayment's physical parameters are changed by introducing wrinkles with specific amplitudes and wavelengths. These geometric parameters enable the material to accommodate varying pipe spacing and thermal expansion rates, resolving the contradiction between fixed installation and uniform heating performance.
2Device complexity
If ceramic tiles are directly installed on the floor heating system, then the construction process is simplified, but the tiles are prone to cracking and damage due to stress imbalances
Solution Approach 1:
The decoupled underlayment acts as an intermediary layer between the floor heating system and the ceramic tiles. Its wrinkled structure provides a decoupling effect that absorbs stress imbalances and prevents them from transmitting to the tiles, thereby protecting tile durability while maintaining construction simplicity.
Solution Approach 2:
The underlayment's wrinkled structure provides beforehand cushioning by absorbing and distributing thermal stresses before they can reach the ceramic tiles. This pre-cushioning effect prevents tile cracking due to stress imbalances caused by varying heating conditions.
3Ease of manufacture
If the underlayment has a fixed rigid structure, then the manufacturing is easier, but it cannot accommodate different thermal expansion rates in different regions
Solution Approach 1:
The underlayment is designed as a flexible thin film with a wrinkled surface structure. This flexibility allows it to adapt to different thermal expansion rates in various building regions while maintaining manufacturing feasibility through techniques like heat treatment or mechanical wrinkling of the polymer material.
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 solution improves thermal insulation, reduces the risk of ceramic tile cracking, and extends the service life and safety performance of the tiles by accommodating different expansion coefficients and stress environments.
Implementation Method 1
an adhesive layer (1) disposed on bottom of the wiring layer (2)
Implementation Method 2
A middle portion of the first protrusion portion (21) is provided to a first concave structure with a small top portion and a large bottom portion
Data Source
AI summary
A decoupled floor underlayment with multiple-layer composite structures includes a wiring layer, and a adhesive layer. The wiring layer includes a body of the wiring layer, and a plurality of protrusion portions disposed on the body of the wiring layer. The protrusion portions include a first protrusion portion and a second protrusion portion with different types of structures. The first protrusion portion and the second protrusion portion are arranged in a staggered manner in an equidistant manner on the body of the wiring layer row by row, column by column. After mortars embedded in the cavity is solidified, blocks formed by the mortars solidification have different expansion coefficients when encountering with heat and cold, and can better cope with an unbalanced stress environment, and more effectively alleviate the damage to a tile floor caused by evacuations of the blocks.