Tray Table Shaft Sleeves for Stable Extension and Retraction
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Solution Overview
Problem
Tray tables on aircraft often experience misalignment and instability during deployment and retraction due to manufacturing inaccuracies and varying seat pitch, leading to suboptimal positioning relative to users.
Innovation Solution
The use of internal flexible sleeves with flared legs and outer casings to apply constant pressure on shafts, combined with positive stopping features like pins, ribs, and detents, to prevent misalignment and control the linear movement of tray tables, ensuring stable and precise deployment and retraction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Strength
If tray tables are connected to rigid shafts for linear movement, then structural strength is improved, but manufacturing misalignment causes lateral instability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs flexible sleeves that envelop the shafts, allowing them to flex and self-align during linear movement. These sleeves compensate for manufacturing misalignments while maintaining structural integrity, thus resolving the contradiction between strength and lateral stability.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces adjustable stopping features (detents, ribs, pins) that can be positioned at various points along the shaft travel. This allows the system to maintain optimal positioning parameters while accommodating variations in seat pitch and manufacturing tolerances, thereby improving both strength and stability.
2Ease of manufacture
If tray tables are fixed at a nominal distance from users, then manufacturing simplicity is improved, but adaptability to varying seat pitch is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transforms the fixed-distance tray table into a dynamic system with movable shafts that can extend and retract. The stopping features provide discrete positioned stops that accommodate different seat pitch configurations, maintaining manufacturing simplicity while enabling adaptability.
3Ease of operation
If shafts are allowed to move freely during deployment, then ease of operation is improved, but misalignment and instability increase
Solution Approach 1:
The flexible sleeves act as intermediaries between the shafts and the outer casings. They facilitate smooth movement during deployment while continuously applying pressure to maintain alignment, thus preserving ease of operation while preventing misalignment.
Solution Approach 2:
The shafts are designed to self-align through the flexible sleeves during movement. The sleeves automatically adjust to accommodate minor misalignments without requiring external intervention, maintaining both ease of operation and alignment 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
This solution effectively reduces or eliminates lateral misalignment and enhances the stability of tray tables during deployment, ensuring they remain optimally positioned and securely extend or retract, improving user access and safety.
Implementation Method 1
internal flexible sleeves intended to provide constant pressure on the shafts and reduce, if not cancel, possible misalignments
Data Source
AI summary
Mechanisms designed to facilitate movement of tray tables or other platforms are addressed. Internal flexible sleeves provide more constant pressure on linearly-moving shafts associated with the tables, reducing or cancelling possible lateral misalignments of the shafts. Outer cases maintain the flexible sleeves in position, and positive stopping features may be employed to prevent extension or retraction of the shafts beyond desired amounts.