Telescoping Tower Legs With Guide Bars To Reduce Play
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Solution Overview
Problem
Telescopic, crank-up, and lattice towers experience instability and strength reduction due to 'play' between sections, which allows lateral and angular motion and creates pressure points, especially in windy conditions, leading to potential failure.
Innovation Solution
A telescoping tower design with legs that slidably engage adjacent sections through a continuous overlap, using parallel female and male sides connected by a web, with linear slide bearings for reduced play and enhanced structural integrity.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If telescoping tower sections are designed with spacing between legs to allow telescopic movement, then the sections can raise and lower smoothly, but lateral and angular motion occurs creating play between sections that reduces stability and strength
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies nesting by placing guide bars inside the leg cavities of adjacent sections, creating an inner-within-outer configuration. The guide bars are received within cavities formed in the legs of neighboring sections, allowing telescopic movement while maintaining continuous contact and eliminating play between sections.
2Stability of the object's composition
If wheels or rollers are added to eliminate play between sections, then lateral motion is restricted, but major stress is created on contact points reducing lifespan of legs and pulleys
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces guide bars as intermediary elements that mediate between adjacent leg sections. These guide bars provide continuous surface contact along the length of the legs rather than point contact, distributing stresses along the entire contact area and eliminating wear points while maintaining stability.
3Stability of the object's composition
If slide bar mechanisms are used to press against each other to eliminate play, then section stability improves, but wear points are created on leg surfaces reducing component lifespan
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from point contact or line contact to surface contact by extending the guide bars along the length of the leg cavities. This dimensional change from zero-dimensional point contact to two-dimensional surface contact distributes wear across a larger area and eliminates concentrated wear points on leg surfaces.
Data Source
AI summary
A telescoping tower includes a plurality of nested tower sections extendable in a telescoping direction, each of the plurality of nested tower sections having a plurality of legs that define respective heights of the plurality of nested tower sections in the telescoping direction, each of the plurality of legs slidably engaging at least one leg of at least one adjacent one of the plurality of nested tower sections along an overlap in the respective heights thereof.