A cleaner head
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Solution Overview
Problem
Vacuum cleaner brush bars face high torque during cleaning of deeply piled carpets, leading to stalling issues, while soft bristles or low density tufts reduce cleaning performance on short piled carpets.
Innovation Solution
A cleaner head with a rotatable agitator featuring a flexible body and surface engaging members, such as bristles or resilient strips, inclined relative to the suction opening, allowing bristles to protrude only partially during rotation, reducing torque and improving flexibility for uneven surfaces.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the brush bar uses stiff bristles or high density tufts to improve cleaning performance on short piled carpets, then cleaning effectiveness is improved, but torque increases causing the brush bar to stall during cleaning of deeply piled carpets
Solution Approach 1:
The brush bar is designed with a flexible support structure that allows dynamic adjustment of bristle protrusion. The brush bar can flex upward when encountering high-resistance surfaces like deeply piled carpets, reducing torque and preventing stalling, while maintaining effective cleaning on shorter carpets through normal operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes the effective bristle protrusion parameter dynamically. During normal cleaning, bristles protrude sufficiently for effective cleaning. When torque becomes excessive, the flexible support allows the brush bar to flex upward, reducing bristle protrusion and thereby reducing torque to prevent stalling.
2Reliability
If soft bristles or low density tufts are used to reduce torque and prevent stalling, then the risk of stalling is reduced, but cleaning performance on short piled carpets deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of using permanently soft bristles, the invention uses a dynamically adjustable system where stiff bristles can reduce their effective protrusion through flexing of the support structure, achieving torque reduction only when needed while maintaining cleaning effectiveness during normal operation.
Solution Approach 2:
The brush bar support structure is segmented into flexible sections that can independently deflect under load. This allows different portions of the brush bar to adjust their protrusion based on local surface conditions, maintaining cleaning performance where needed while reducing torque in high-resistance areas.
3Productivity
If the brush bar is designed with fixed bristle protrusion to maintain consistent cleaning performance, then cleaning effectiveness is maintained, but the ability to accommodate uneven surfaces and prevent stalling is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The brush bar support structure transitions from a fixed design to a dynamic flexible design that automatically adapts to surface conditions. The flexibility allows the brush bar to conform to uneven surfaces while maintaining sufficient bristle contact for effective cleaning, and to reduce protrusion when encountering deeply piled carpets to prevent stalling.
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
The solution reduces the risk of stalling during deep cleaning while maintaining effective cleaning performance on various carpet types by allowing increased stiffness of bristles and accommodating surface unevenness, with debris easily entrained in the air flow.
Implementation Method 1
a flexible body mounted on the drive shaft
Implementation Method 2
debris easily entrained in the air flow
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
AI summary
A cleaner head (10) for a cleaning appliance includes a rotatable agitator (40) and an agitator chamber housing the agitator. The agitator (40) includes a drive shaft, a flexible body connected to the drive shaft and surface engaging members mounted on the flexible body. The agitator chamber includes a downwardly- directed opening (26) through which debris energised by the surface engaging members enters the cleaner head. The opening (26) is located in a plane relative to which the flexible body (48) is inclined so that, with rotation of the agitator (40), the surface engaging members protrude through the opening, preferably towards the front of the opening.