Waterless Trap Vortex Sealing Evaporation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional waterless traps for floor drains face issues with evaporation of fluid in p-traps, leading to potential sewer gas leaks, and often require additional components that increase cost and thickness, which can be unacceptable in certain installations.
Innovation Solution
A waterless trap design featuring a housing with blades to promote vortex water flow and an improved sealing arrangement, along with air passages to facilitate easy opening of the seal during drainage, preventing gas leaks and maintaining the liquid barrier effectively.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple frusto-conical seal members and multiple seats are employed to improve the seal, then sealing reliability is improved, but device complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The seal member is divided into multiple sealing surfaces (first, second, and third sealing surfaces) that contact different seats sequentially. This segmentation allows the seal to engage multiple seating positions, improving reliability by providing redundant sealing points while maintaining a relatively simple overall structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The seal member is designed with multiple sealing surfaces that engage in a predetermined sequence during installation and operation. The first sealing surface engages the first seat initially, providing immediate sealing, while subsequent sealing surfaces engage additional seats as the seal member settles, ensuring progressive and reliable sealing without requiring complex assembly procedures.
2Reliability
If the seal member is misaligned, then sealing reliability deteriorates, but manufacturing precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The seal member features multiple sealing surfaces distributed along its length, each capable of engaging a corresponding seat. This segmentation means that even if alignment is imperfect, multiple contact points provide redundancy, ensuring that at least some sealing surfaces maintain effective contact and prevent gas leakage.
Solution Approach 2:
The seal member is designed with varying geometric parameters along its length, including different angles and positions for each sealing surface. This allows the seal to adapt to slight misalignments by engaging seats at optimized positions, reducing sensitivity to manufacturing tolerances and installation errors while maintaining sealing effectiveness.
3Ease of operation
If the trap seal is designed to open easily during drainage, then ease of operation is improved, but sealing reliability may worsen
Solution Approach 1:
The seal member is designed as a flexible, elastic element that can dynamically change its position and shape in response to water flow and pressure changes. During drainage, water pressure causes the seal member to deflect and open, allowing easy passage of water. When drainage stops, the elastic material returns to its original position, automatically resealing the trap. This dynamic behavior enables the seal to switch between open and closed states without mechanical actuators.
Solution Approach 2:
The seal member's geometric parameters, particularly its flexibility and elastic properties, are optimized to respond to varying pressure conditions. The material and cross-sectional dimensions are designed so that normal water pressure easily opens the seal during drainage, while the elastic recovery force ensures reliable resealing when pressure equalizes, maintaining both ease of operation and sealing reliability.
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 design effectively inhibits evaporation of water in p-traps, preventing sewer gas leaks and ensuring a robust seal, while allowing easy water drainage and accommodating pressurized conditions in floor drains without adding unnecessary thickness or expense.
Implementation Method 1
two or more blades may promote vortex water flow of water received in the trap
Implementation Method 2
The seal member may be made of an elastic material such that the seal member deflects downward when water is draining through the trap
Implementation Method 3
one or more air passages that may allow the trap seal to open with ease when the drain pipe is pressurized
Data Source
AI summary
A waterless trap for use in a drain assembly includes flow enhancing features to promote the vortex water flow of water received in the trap, an improved sealing arrangement to enhance the seal between a seal member and the housing to inhibit sewer gas leaks from an attached drain pipe by maintaining an evaporation barrier that assists in retaining water in a corresponding p-trap, and a plurality of air passages can allow the trap seal to open with ease when the drain pipe is pressurized. These features may be used in combination with one another or may be independently employed.