Extruded Floorboard With Integrated Legs For Clean Room Clearance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Modular clean rooms require improved flooring that is lighter, less expensive, and provides more space for components, as existing solutions often lack sufficient clearance for air bearings and other components due to heavy and bulky equipment.
Innovation Solution
The development of extruded metal floorboards with integrated long and short legs, featuring a tongue and groove system that allows for shared spacers and a stiffening rib, enabling efficient spacing and reduced metal cutting for air bearings, thus creating an empty cavity below the floorboards.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Volume of stationary object
If traditional flooring systems are used in modular clean rooms, then the floor structure provides basic support, but the space underneath the floor is insufficient for installing air bearings and other components
Solution Approach 1:
The floor board is segmented into distinct functional regions: a horizontal floor section for support, vertical legs for spacing, a stiffening rib for structural integrity, and tongue-groove features for assembly. This segmentation allows each element to serve its specific purpose while collectively providing the needed clearance volume underneath without excessive overall complexity
Solution Approach 2:
The invention transitions from a traditional two-dimensional floor surface to a three-dimensional structure by adding vertical legs that extend downward. This dimensional change creates unused vertical space underneath the floor board, transforming the floor from a flat support surface to a spaced platform that accommodates air bearings and other components in the vertical dimension
2Strength
If heavy duty materials are used for flooring to support equipment, then the floor structure is strong enough, but the overall weight increases
Solution Approach 1:
The floor board utilizes aluminum, a lightweight material, combined with strategic structural features including a stiffening rib and integrated legs. This composite approach of material selection plus structural design achieves the necessary strength to support heavy equipment while maintaining lower weight compared to traditional heavy duty flooring materials
3Adaptability or versatility
If air bearings are installed under the floor, then the modular clean room can be moved, but there is very little room to install them due to space constraints
Solution Approach 1:
The floor board structure is designed in advance with integrated legs that create predetermined clearance space underneath. This preliminary structuring of the floor board ensures that when air bearings need to be installed for mobility, the necessary installation space already exists as part of the floor's inherent geometry, eliminating the need for additional modification
4Ease of manufacture
If extruded metal floorboards with integrated legs are used, then manufacturing is simplified and waste is reduced, but the cross section design must accommodate multiple functions
Solution Approach 1:
Multiple floor board functions are merged into a single extruded cross section design: the horizontal floor section provides support surface, vertical legs provide spacing and mounting, the stiffening rib provides structural strength, and tongue-groove features provide assembly capability. This merging of functions into one integrated extrusion simplifies manufacturing by eliminating the need for separate components and assembly steps
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3A~3B
AI summary
Extruded floorboards having integrated standoffs, or legs, to offset them from the ground or floor underneath, are disclosed in which adjacent floorboards share a common leg for standing off. On each side of the cross section of a floorboard, a shorter leg mates with a longer leg of an adjacent floorboard through a tongue & groove. The mated legs are supported by the longer leg and a foot at the bottom of the longer leg. A stiffening rib is included. The longer leg is longer than the shorter leg and stiffening rig by a predetermined distance so as to leave clearance for air bearings or other components underneath an assembled floor.