Vehicle Decorative Component with Tapered Display Panel

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing decorative components in motor vehicles fail to harmoniously connect different materials like glass and wood, resulting in a hard visual and haptic transition, which disrupts the interior design.

Innovation Solution

A decorative component with a display panel that overlaps a decorative element, featuring a monotonously thinner material thickness, allowing a gradual transition from glass to wood-based materials, creating a seamless and harmonious visual and haptic experience by using a transparent or translucent display panel with a changing cross-section and adhesion promoter.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If different materials (glass and wood) are connected in an interior space, then material diversity and design flexibility are improved, but visual and haptic discontinuity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvematerial diversityVSAvoidvisual and haptic continuity
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSStability of the object's composition

Solution Approach 1:

The display panel is designed with spatially varying thickness, creating different local qualities within the same component. The thicker region provides structural support and glass-like appearance, while the thinner region allows wood grain visibility and warmer aesthetic, enabling seamless transition between different material characteristics in different locations

Inventive Principle:
Principle #3Local quality

Solution Approach 2:

The patent merges glass and wood materials into a single integrated decorative component rather than keeping them as separate abutting elements. The overlapping region where the display panel becomes thinner allows the wood decorative element to show through, creating a unified structure that combines both materials harmoniously

Inventive Principle:
Principle #5Merging (Combining)

2Stability of the object's composition

If a display panel overlaps a decorative element, then material transition smoothness is improved, but structural complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvematerial transition smoothnessVSAvoidstructural complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
Stability of the object's compositionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

Instead of transitioning materials horizontally at an abutting joint, the patent introduces a vertical dimension by varying the thickness of the display panel. This dimensional change allows the glass panel to gradually reveal the wood element beneath it, creating a smooth three-dimensional transition that simplifies the overall structure compared to complex multi-layer assemblies

Inventive Principle:
Principle #17Another dimension (Dimensionality change)

Data Source

PatentUS11420520B2Decorative component
Publication Date: 2022.08.23 DR ING H C F PORSCHE AG
  • US11420520B2 patent drawing

AI summary

A decorative component for an interior space of a motor vehicle includes a display panel configured to cover a display element and/or constituting a display element. The decorative component further includes a decorative element, adjoining the display panel, configured to provide a visually and haptically perceptible decorative surface. The haptic and/or visual perception of the decorative surface is different than the haptic and/or visual perception of a panel surface of the display panel. The display panel overlaps the decorative element in an overlapping region and a material thickness of the display panel is designed such that it becomes monotonously thinner toward the decorative element in the overlapping region.