Electrical Contact Coupling With Snow-Diverting Plunger End Face
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electrical contact couplings for automatic train couplings are prone to snow accumulation during winter operations, which impedes the actuating plunger's movement, leading to improper coupling and potential safety risks.
Innovation Solution
The design incorporates outward and rearward bevels, recesses, and curves on the actuating plunger's end face to divert snow, ensuring the plunger can be fully pressed into the support frame, and includes a protective flap that adjusts between closed and open positions to facilitate electrical contact.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the actuating plunger is surrounded by a closed end face, then the structural integrity and simplicity is improved, but snow accumulation prevents sufficient pressing into the support frame
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the harmful snow accumulation from the closed end face by introducing openings and recesses. These features allow snow to be removed or diverted away from the actuating plunger area, preventing snow adhesion while maintaining the overall structural integrity of the end face.
Solution Approach 2:
The openings and recesses act as intermediary elements between the snow environment and the actuating plunger. They provide pathways for snow to be diverted or removed, mediating the interaction between the external snow conditions and the internal coupling mechanism.
2Object-affected harmful factors
If the protective flap is added to cover the front access, then protection against environmental factors is improved, but access to connection contacts is restricted
Solution Approach 1:
The protective flap is designed as a movable component that can dynamically switch between closed and open positions. This allows the system to adapt between protection mode (flap closed) and operation mode (flap open), resolving the contradiction between protection and accessibility.
Solution Approach 2:
The protective flap provides localized protection only where needed (covering the connection contacts when closed), while allowing access when opened. This local quality approach enables selective protection without permanently restricting access.
3Ease of operation
If snow is diverted into openings and recesses, then the actuating plunger can be fully pressed in, but the end face structure becomes more complex
Solution Approach 1:
The end face is segmented into functional zones: solid portions for structural integrity and openings/recesses for snow management. This segmentation allows the complex function of snow diversion to be integrated into the end face structure without requiring separate external components.
Solution Approach 2:
The snow diversion features (openings and recesses) are merged directly into the end face structure itself, rather than being separate components. This combining approach reduces overall device complexity while achieving the snow diversion function.
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3~6
Figure 7~8
AI summary
The invention relates to an electrical contact coupling for an automatic train coupling, in particular a central buffer coupling of a rail vehicle; comprising a coupling housing in which a contact carrier with at least one electrical connection contact is accommodated and is accessible from a front-side access of the coupling housing; wherein, for the electrical contacting of the at least one connection contact with an electrical connection contact of a matching electrical contact coupling, the coupling housing is adjustable in a feed movement with the front-side access to the front and/or a protective flap closing the front access in a closed position and releasing it in an open position from the closed position into the open position with an actuating mechanism;wherein the actuating mechanism comprises an actuating plunger arranged adjacent to the front access, protruding from a support frame formed integrally with the coupling housing or connected thereto, which actuating plunger can be pressed into the support frame to actuate the actuating mechanism. The electrical contact coupling according to the invention is characterized in that an end face of the support frame immediately surrounding the actuating plunger is provided with one or more openings and/or with one or more recesses with radially outwardly open edges and/or with one or more bevels and/or curves extending radially outward from the actuating plunger and increasingly rearwardly for deflecting snow adhering to the end face.