In 2010 the locks at the Panama strait had problems with a lack of sweet water supply. For this Practical Solution thought of a new concept based on inflatable rubber bags. One or more inflatable rubber bags can be placed on the bottom of the lock. Just by filling these bags with air less sweet water is needed for a good functioning Panama strait. The bags can be strengthened with glass or an other fiber. A big Dutch engineering office is now busy with the practical realisation of this concept. Here you can read more.
Welding is used as a connection method for metal parts. The problem with welding is that this connection method is only very strong and reliable when the welds are loaded under shear stresses. Welds do not like bending forces. Bending forces occur when for example a blast wall is welded on the decks of ships or oil platforms. To overcome these unfavourable stresses in the welds two existing concepts, the “curve limitor” and “insert plate” where shown during a course to improve blast walls. Practical Solution thought that the two shown concepts were very expensive. Practical Solution came with a new simple and effective concept of a diagonal with different leg thickness. Due to the different leg thickness you are able to bring deformations to a place in the construction were these deformations will not bring problems to the constructural integrity of the construction. The deformations will not happen near the welds but at the transition in thickness change of both the legs of the diagonal. This concept is about 80% cheaper as the other two mentioned details. But more important the loads in the critical welds decreased by 80%. A finite elements computertest done by TNO showed these results.
Fire Standards require that on upper floor levels an enclosed cover around the exhaust pipe of a wood stove should be placed made out of fire retardant material. This will overcome a quick spread of fire from inside this cover to the living areas of a house. Practical Solution wanted to use more heat out of this cover and was able to make holes in this cover without having problems with fire regulations. This inventive solution is a nylon wire that holds two steel plates in upright position. When a fire occurs the nylon wire will melt and steel plates will fall down due to gravity and cover the two holes made in the enclosing cover. With this fail safe system Practical Solution is able to use about 40% of the heat in the exhaust pipe. Normally 100% of this heat would leave the chimney. Now 40% of this heat is used to heat up upper floors. Here you can read more.
Practical Solution invented a new concept for a propulsion system for ships. When we were at MARIN in Wageningen (MARIN does a lot of investigation in ship stability and propulsion systems) the project manager propulsion systems (he had this job already 20 years) was very enthusiastic about it. Read more about this on the page Examples / innovative concepts outside the field……….