Drinking Cover Gasket Sealing for Spill-Resistant Liquid Flow
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing drinking device covers are complex and prone to spillage, with designs like splash guards and indentations on the valve element being difficult to manufacture and clean, and they often fail to prevent liquid from spilling during shaking or drops.
Innovation Solution
A cover with a gasket and cover body that includes a liquid passage area and a sealing rim, where the gasket is designed to maintain sealing contact through structural features like channels and a closure lip, allowing controlled fluid communication to prevent spillage and enable drinking, without the need for complex structural features.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a splash guard with through openings and indentations on the valve element is used, then liquid flow control is improved, but device complexity and manufacturing difficulty increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the complex splash guard with through openings and the indentations on the valve element. Instead, it uses a simple valve element that contacts the gasket directly, extracting only the essential sealing function while eliminating unnecessary structural complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of using a complex splash guard structure to control liquid flow, the patent inverts the approach by using a simple valve element-gasket interface where the valve element itself creates the sealing contact, reversing the traditional design paradigm.
2Reliability
If a splash guard with through openings and indentations is used, then liquid flow control is improved, but cleaning difficulty increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and removes the splash guard structure entirely, leaving only the essential valve element and gasket components. This simplification makes the device much easier to clean while maintaining liquid flow control functionality through the valve-gasket sealing mechanism.
3Device complexity
If a simple cover design is used, then manufacturing ease and cleaning ease improve, but spillage prevention during shaking or drops deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The valve element is designed to contact the gasket in advance, creating a pre-established sealing interface. This preliminary sealing action ensures that even during shaking or drops, the liquid flow is controlled from the outset, preventing spillage before it can occur.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies local quality by concentrating the sealing function at the specific contact point between the valve element and gasket. This localized sealing interface provides reliable spillage prevention during mechanical shocks while keeping the overall structure simple.
4Reliability
If a valve element with abutment and splash guard is used, then liquid flow control is improved, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the splash guard and the abutment structure from the valve element. The simplified valve element directly contacts the gasket to control liquid flow, eliminating complex manufacturing steps while maintaining essential liquid flow control functionality.
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 cover effectively prevents spillage during normal use and mechanical shocks while allowing easy liquid access, maintaining a leakproof seal without complex manufacturing or cleaning issues.
Implementation Method 1
The gasket is designed from an elastic, rubberlike material and has such a shape that it is caused to lay slightly pretensioned against the abutment of the valve element
Implementation Method 2
When a portion of the gasket is subjected to an external suction force at the position of the abutment, a portion of the gasket is displaced slightly off the abutment
Implementation Method 3
When the external suction force is removed, the gasket will resume its original shape so that the sealing contact of the gasket to the abutment of the valve element is completely restored
Implementation Method 4
The gasket has at least one structural feature configured to secure the sealing contact of the gasket to the sealing rim of the cover body in the default condition of the cover
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~4
Figure 5~6
AI summary
A cover (12) is configured to be used with a liquid container for realizing a drinking device in conjunction with the liquid container. The cover (12) is particularly designed to prevent fluid communication therethrough in a default condition, and to allow fluid communication therethrough in an actuated condition. To that end, the cover (12) includes a gasket (30) and a cover body (20) accommodating the gasket (30), the cover body (20) comprising a liquid passage area (21) and a sealing rim (22). In order for the cover (12) to be leakproof to a high extent under all circumstances in which it is not desired to retrieve liquid through the cover (12), the gasket (30) has at least one structural feature (34) configured to secure sealing contact of the gasket (30) to the sealing rim (22) of the cover body (20) in the default condition of the cover (12).