Scientists are solving the problem of urinal splashback, one drop at a time

[ad_1]

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have provided new designs for the urinal, saying they reduce the amount of splashes, or “splashes” to 1.4% of the standard public model.

The urinal is called cornucopia and nautilus, so the urinal is designed 30 degrees below the “impact angle”, which significantly reduces the “flow rate of splashing under human urination conditions”.

Pan Zhao, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, said the idea was on his, and his colleague Randy Hurd called him one afternoon.

“I noticed a lot of splashes on his pants and shoes after he used the bathroom,” Pan said. “We were thinking: How can we prevent this confusion?”

Changing the viscosity of urine is not an option – although they think it’s great – so changing the shape of the socket seems to be the next best option.

They are inspired by nature and daily life. In front of the latter, Pan points out that the water in the kitchen faucets sometimes spits violently out of the dishes during the dishwashing process. However, the angle is reduced to less than 30 degrees and the splash disappears.

Dogs are another source of information: The team noted that when they pee on trees, they are rarely hit by splashes.

“What dogs do is very clever,” Pan said. “By minimizing the angle of composition, they keep the fur clean.”

The urinal design dates back at least 1,000 years and extends to Sri Lanka, the researchers wrote, “has been stagnant for more than a century.” Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 sculpture, titled The Fountain, can be seen in art museums in Philadelphia, San Francisco and London, but the restrooms there will not be nowhere to be seen.

In research that cannot be breathtaking, they found that in the United States alone, existing urinal designs create something every day in the order of a million liters of splashes. Each urinal average is about 18 ml, multiplied by the 56 million units in the country.

They cite a 2019 TTC report that estimates annual cleaning costs $122,418 per bathroom from 2020 to 2024.

While many solutions boil down to maintaining the right goal, there is no direct handling of the splash problem either. In 2013, the urinal at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam was decorated with images of fly in bowls, assuming that users might aim at it instead of missing the socket altogether.

“Urine screens and mats have been developed to try to alleviate this problem,” the researchers wrote. However, this after-sales technology does not reduce splashes at the source. Cornucopia and Nautilus make.

The mathematics is a bit complicated, but these studies develop equations for splash quantities, which they are called Q* (unfortunately, not P).

Reducing the Q* value means creating a surface that causes urine to hit an angle of 30 degrees at a less velocity, i.e. “bladder pressure and therefore, jet velocity and flow count is almost horizontal”, and “the trajectory of the droplet sequence when landing almost vertically at the drip end”.

They added: “The goal is to design a curve z = f(r) that intersects z = g(r) with arbitrary k, which can be modeled by ordinary differential equations.” Easy peasy.

Real-world tests do not involve male members on the team drinking large amounts of fluid, but use “diaper-size-fitting equipment…with anatomically accurate urethral geometry, pumps, flow meters, flow meters, flow sums and valves”.

Then there is the problem of creating test urinals in various shapes and sizes, a store-bought urinal for control purposes. The researchers took the tests using colored water and took pictures, with kraft paper placed to absorb splashes.

Pan said the winning designs are called Nautilus and Cortucopia after the natural shape of the shell and the corners. The team wanted to go with “Nauti-Loo” and “Cornuco-Pee-A”, but the Oxford University Press, which published the research, did not.

This may explain why the paper is named “Flying-free urinal for global sustainability and accessibility: Designed by physical and differential equations”, using the term “urination”. Its closest thing is that the Scatologicy term is “Pissoir”, a French outdoor urinal term, which is also presented under the name “Vespasienne”.

The pun that does print it is a hypothetical “hostile anti-diaper surface”. Since low angles minimize splashes, researchers realize that high angles will maximize it.

They wrote: “Although it is not suitable for the usual urinal, it demonstrates the design philosophy. Such surfaces can be installed outdoors to prevent public urination, as criminals will lag behind enhanced splash prey. This hostile surface may be called “urin-no.” ”.

[ad_2]

Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *