Foldable Support Plate Assembly for Thin Yet Stable Display Support
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Foldable terminals face reduced strength and reliability due to the design trend towards light and thin support plates, affecting the overall strength and usability of the foldable mechanism.
Innovation Solution
A foldable mechanism with an integrally formed support plate that is fixedly mounted on a base, featuring sliding and rotating connections, reinforcement ribs, and stopping blocks to enhance strength and rigidity, ensuring stable support for the display.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Weight of moving object
If the support plate is designed to be light and thin, then the foldable mechanism achieves a lighter and thinner overall structure, but the strength of the support plate is reduced, resulting in reduced overall strength of the foldable mechanism
Solution Approach 1:
The support plate incorporates reinforcement ribs at specific locations (such as around the display area and hinge connections) to locally enhance strength where needed, while maintaining thin and light design in other areas. This allows the support plate to be lightweight overall while providing sufficient strength at critical points.
Solution Approach 2:
The support plate uses composite material structures, combining different materials or material configurations to achieve both light weight and high strength. For example, using high-strength alloys or composite laminates that provide superior strength-to-weight ratio compared to traditional single-material plates.
2Weight of moving object
If the support plate is designed to be light and thin, then the foldable mechanism achieves a lighter and thinner overall structure, but the reliability of the foldable mechanism is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
Critical components such as hinge connections, mounting areas, and support structures are locally reinforced with thicker sections or additional ribs, ensuring high reliability at stress-concentration points while maintaining overall lightness. The reinforcement ribs are strategically positioned to prevent deformation and failure during folding and unfolding operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The design incorporates pre-reinforced structures and damping elements that prepare the support plate to withstand anticipated stresses and impacts before they occur, enhancing reliability without significantly increasing weight. This includes designing the reinforcement ribs to absorb and distribute impact forces before they can cause damage.
3Weight of moving object
If the support plate is made thinner, then the foldable mechanism achieves better portability, but the support area and support force for the display are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The support plate uses localized thickness variations, being thin in non-critical areas for weight reduction but incorporating thicker reinforced zones directly beneath the display area and at structural connection points. The reinforcement ribs extend the effective support area without significantly increasing overall plate thickness or weight.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of increasing support area by making the plate larger or uniformly thicker, the design uses vertically oriented reinforcement ribs that add structural support in the thickness dimension. This allows the thin plate to provide adequate support force by distributing loads through the rib structures rather than relying on plate area alone.
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
AI summary
This application provides a foldable mechanism and a foldable terminal. A support plate is an integrally formed structural member, so that overall strength and rigidity of the support plate can be ensured while light and thin design of the foldable mechanism is implemented, thereby ensuring overall strength of the foldable mechanism, and improving use reliability of the foldable mechanism. In addition, the support plate is fixedly mounted on a base, so that the support plate does not float up or down relative to the base as the foldable mechanism moves. Therefore, the support plate can always provide a display with strong support, and a support area and support force of the foldable mechanism for the display can be increased, thereby improving pressing and touching experience of a user on the display, and further improving anti-fall and anti-impact reliability of the display.