Door Shutter With Elastic Connectors For Curved Guide Grooves
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional door shutters face difficulties in maintaining sliding characteristics and overall rigidity, especially when dealing with guide grooves of varying heights or curvatures, leading to potential misalignment and excessive resistance during operation.
Innovation Solution
The door shutter design features a main body with varying wall thickness and elastic connecting members, allowing it to fit seamlessly into guide grooves with curved portions, maintaining a horizontal sliding track and parallel surface alignment, while being bendable with minimal stress to prevent noise and resistance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Weight of moving object
If the shutter is made of resin with thin-walled portions to enable bending in the sliding direction, then the shutter becomes lighter and more formable, but it becomes difficult to maintain overall rigidity while being bendable with weak force
Solution Approach 1:
The shutter is constructed as a composite structure combining a resin main body with reinforcing ribs. The main body provides lightness and formability, while the ribs integrated into the main body provide structural reinforcement to maintain overall rigidity during bending operations
Solution Approach 2:
The shutter features localized thin-walled portions at specific locations where bending is required, while other areas maintain sufficient wall thickness to preserve rigidity. This creates different local properties within the same component to balance flexibility and strength requirements
2Adaptability or versatility
If the guide grooves have different heights or include curve portions to accommodate installation variations, then the shutter can adapt to different installation conditions, but it becomes difficult to settle a stable sliding track and maintain sliding characteristics
Solution Approach 1:
The shutter incorporates elastic connecting members that can dynamically adjust to variations in guide groove heights and curvatures. These elastic components allow the shutter to adapt its shape during sliding, maintaining reliable contact with the guide grooves despite installation variations
Solution Approach 2:
The elastic connecting members change their physical parameters (shape, position) in response to the guide groove configuration. This parameter adaptation allows the shutter to maintain stable sliding characteristics while accommodating different installation conditions
3Ease of operation
If the main body is bent in the sliding direction to follow the guide groove curvature, then the shutter can navigate curved paths, but excessive local resistance and noise occur during sliding
Solution Approach 1:
The shutter utilizes flexible elastic connecting members that can bend and conform to curved guide grooves. This flexibility allows the shutter to follow curved paths smoothly without generating excessive friction or noise, as the elastic material adapts to the groove shape rather than forcing a rigid fit
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
This design ensures smooth sliding, maintains external appearance, and enhances the shutter's rigidity and flexibility, reducing local resistance and noise, even with curved guide grooves.
Implementation Method 1
a number of rigid pieces 20, 20A and elastic connecting members 3, 3A, 3B
Data Source
AI summary
A door shutter is disposed in a device having an opening, and side portions for defining the opening. The other side of the opening extends higher than the one side. Guide grooves are formed along the side portions. The shutter includes main bodies bendable in a sliding direction for opening and closing the opening on the device, and projecting portions projecting from lateral sides of the main bodies in a width direction thereof and slidably engaging the guide grooves. The main body has first and second sides corresponding to the one and the other sides of the device. The wall thickness at the second side is thicker than that at the first side corresponding to the other side to form a substantially uniform surface from the one to the other sides through the main bodies.