Fluid Filter Seal With Flexible Skirt For Leak-Free Assembly
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing fluid filter assemblies face challenges in achieving a reliable fluid-tight seal within removable filter bowls, particularly during the assembly and disassembly processes.
Innovation Solution
A new seal design featuring a resiliently flexible, sloping skirt with specific angular extensions and slits allows for a fluid-tight closure by biasing into a groove when mating parts are aligned, ensuring secure contact and fluid passage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a traditional seal design is used in the filter bowl, then the structure is simple, but the fluid-tight seal reliability is insufficient during assembly and disassembly
Solution Approach 1:
The seal is divided into three distinct functional segments: a main body for structural support, a resiliently flexible skirt for sealing contact, and a protrusion for engagement. This segmentation allows each part to perform its specific function optimally while maintaining overall seal reliability during assembly and disassembly operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The skirt is designed with resilient flexibility, allowing it to dynamically adapt its shape during assembly and disassembly. The skirt can deform to accommodate minor misalignments and maintain continuous sealing contact, while the protrusion provides dynamic engagement with the filter bowl to guide proper positioning during assembly.
2Ease of operation
If the seal uses a rigid structure, then the manufacturing precision is easier to achieve, but the ease of operation during assembly and disassembly is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The skirt is constructed as a flexible element that can deform during assembly and disassembly operations. This flexibility allows the seal to accommodate variations in alignment and maintain sealing contact without requiring high manufacturing precision, while still being manufacturable using standard molding techniques.
Solution Approach 2:
The seal design incorporates specific geometric parameters including angular extensions (e.g., 45-degree angles) and controlled flexibility characteristics. These parameter optimizations balance the ease of manufacture with the ease of operation, allowing the seal to be easily manufactured while providing smooth assembly and disassembly operations.
3Area of stationary object
If the seal extends fully out of the groove, then the sealing surface area is maximized, but the device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The seal design adds dimensional features beyond a simple radial extension, including angular extensions and a protruding element. These dimensional additions maximize the sealing surface area and engagement capability without significantly increasing overall complexity, as the features are integrated into a single molded component.
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 seal effectively maintains a fluid-tight connection between filter bowl and adapter, facilitating easy assembly and disassembly while ensuring leak-proof performance.
Implementation Method 1
a resiliently flexible, sloping skirt that extends from one side of the main body to a distal end spaced from the main body. The seal is adapted to be received in a groove of a first mating part of a filter assembly and is sized so that the resiliently flexible skirt normally extends out of the groove when it is not biased towards the main body.
Data Source
AI summary
A filter assembly including first and second mating parts and a seal received in a groove of the first mating part. The seal includes a main body and a resiliently flexible, sloping skirt that extends from one side of the main body to a distal end spaced from the main body. The seal is sized so that the resiliently flexible skirt normally extends out of the groove of the first mating part when the skirt is not biased towards the main body. When the first mating part is slid against the second mating part, the second mating part causes the distal end of skirt of the seal to be biased into the groove and towards the main body of the seal.