Thermally responsive air diffuser
AssigneeHart & Cooley, Inc.
InventorJohan Rademaker
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A thermally powered change over diffuser for controlling the flow orientation of air discharged from a ceiling mounted duct outlet includes a pair of vanes pivotably mounted on a platform for scissor-wise movement between an open and a closed position, and a thermally responsive actuator. Discharge of cooled air from the duct causes the actuator to move the vanes together into the closed position, blocking the center of the flow path, and forcing the discharge air to exit in a substantially horizontal orientation. Discharge of heated air causes the actuator to move the vanes apart, into the open position, allowing warm air to flow vertically downwardly into a building space.
Claims16
An air diffuser arrangement, mountable in an air duct for control of air flow patterns through the duct, the diffuser arrangement comprising:
- at least two vanes pivotably mountable to a supporting structure in the air duct, each of the vanes being disposed and movable within a plane between a closed position and at least one open position to selectively deflect air flowing through the central path of the air flow;
- an actuator means, mountable to the supporting structure and connected to said vanes, for controlling positioning of the vanes;
- and
- each of the planes being parallel to each other, and the vanes controlling the air flow through the duct by selectively deflecting, in response to the actuator means, air flowing through the central path of the air flow, when positioned in the closed position.
An air diffuser arrangement, mountable in an air duct for control of air flow patterns through the duct, the diffuser arrangement comprising:
- at least two vanes, each of the vanes pivotably mountable at a pivot point to a supporting structure in the air duct;
- the vanes having at least one open position;
- a control mechanism, mountable to the supporting structure, for applying a force at a location of each of the vanes to cause the application of torques about the pivot points associated with the corresponding vanes;
- the control mechanism comprises a biasing means for applying a biasing force at each location to cause a biasing torque, and a positioning means for applying a positioning force at each location to cause an opposite positioning torque to control the position of the vanes;
- and
- the control mechanism, vanes and supporting structure are interconnected so that the locations on each of the vanes at which the biasing force is applied are the same locations at which the positioning forces are applied.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.