Fire Curtain Metallic Edge Reinforcement Tautness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Fire or smoke curtains tend to lose tautness when exposed to heat, compromising their effectiveness in preventing the spread of fire or smoke due to the lack of sufficient reinforcement at the edges.
Innovation Solution
Incorporating metallic reinforcing strips along the edges of overlapping panels, which are stitched into hems or laid in separate tubes, providing additional stiffness and maintaining contact during deployment and re-rolling, while minimizing thickness and avoiding overlap when wound on a roller.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the curtain is made of fire curtain material without additional reinforcement, then it provides fire resistance, but it loses tautness when exposed to heat due to insufficient edge reinforcement
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines fire curtain material with metallic reinforcing strips to create a composite structure. The metal strips are incorporated into hems or tubes at the panel edges, providing thermal stability and maintaining tautness while the fire curtain material provides fire resistance. This composite approach resolves the contradiction by integrating two materials with complementary properties.
2Stability of the object's composition
If metallic reinforcing strips are incorporated along panel edges, then tautness is maintained under heat exposure, but the thickness of the curtain increases when rolled on a roller
Solution Approach 1:
The metallic reinforcing strips are placed only at the edges of the panels where they are most needed for maintaining tautness and structural integrity. The strips are incorporated into hems or tubes at the panel edges rather than being distributed throughout the entire curtain, providing local reinforcement without significantly increasing the overall thickness of the rolled curtain.
3Reliability
If panels are arranged to overlap at edges, then fire isolation is provided, but the overlaps lose contact when the curtain loses tautness in heat
Solution Approach 1:
The metallic reinforcing strips embedded in the panel edges provide structural stability and maintain the tautness of overlapping panels during heat exposure. This ensures that the overlaps remain in contact and maintain fire isolation effectiveness, resolving the contradiction between fire isolation reliability and panel contact stability.
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 metallic strips maintain the curtain's tautness and ensure effective smoke and fire isolation by maintaining panel edges in contact, even under heat exposure, while optimizing storage by reducing thickness and preventing unnecessary thickening when rolled.
Implementation Method 1
a metallic reinforcing strip incorporated with the panel having the said edge along the latter
Data Source
AI summary
A fire or smoke curtain comprising ng a plurality of panels (41, 42, 43) of fire curtain material. The panels are arranged to overlap at their edges (7) when the curtain is deployed. Each over-lapping edge has a metallic reinforcing strip (12) that are incorporated with the panels having the said edge along the latter.