Project Overview

When a short-time rainstorm comes, the urban drainage system is prone to break down and even cause rainwater backing up and manhole covers being washed away, leading to irreparable harm. Every year, injuries and incidents resulting from manhole covers are common and are the concern of urban development. To solve this problem, this design improves the structure of the manhole cover into a smart lifting-and-unfolding-type anti-suction one.

Organisation

Yang Aoru, Yu Hao, Li jing, Shao Jianxin

Project Brief

Manhole covers are part of the urban infrastructure, potentially dangerous but indispensable. By investigating and analyzing the causes of manhole cover accidents, we redesigned them from the perspective of improving their safety. As the current manhole cover anti-suction function is too poor to avoid the falling accidents, the redesign is based on the production cost and related material supply selection to create a real smart anti-suction manhole cover, so as to reduce the occurrence of manhole cover suction accidents, which can effectively improve the safety of pedestrians and promote the urban infrastructure development.

Project Innovation/Need

This manhole cover solves the following problems:
1. fatal swirls where manhole covers are lost;
2. groundwater back-ups occurred by ordinary manhole covers;
3. not enough eye-catching ordinary roadblock stakes.
The manhole cover is equipped with an automatic pressure sensing device with two turbines inside. When it comes a short-time rainstorm, if the land water level rises to generate downward pressure, the manhole cover will automatically rise and use the turbine to drain upward. If groundwater rises to create upward pressure, the turbine will slow down the outward drainage to avoid causing urban flooding and reduce drainage pressure. When the manhole cover rises and unfolds, the warning light will also rise automatically, and there is a circle of surrounding fluorescent light belt under it to play a warning role in the darker environment. The internal structure also effectively filters trash to prevent it from clogging the sewer pipe. If the manhole cover is missing, the self-luminous fluorescent strip on the inner ring of the base allows pedestrians to detect manhole hazards from a certain distance away.

Design Challenge

The main design challenges are as followings:
1. the distinctive visual effect can attract attention and form a good warning effect at a certain distance, giving pedestrians enough reaction time;
2. the strong structural design and long service life can withstand strong pressure to protect the internal structure from damage;
3. low production costs and easy availability of materials enable mass production. The manhole covers are designed to be easily transportable and can be part of a widely applicable urban infrastructure.

Sustainability

The smart anti-suction manhole cover is a low energy consumption product, no need to connect external power supply, and can be self-powered. The main electrical energy comes from the kinetic energy of gears and the energy generated by water flow, which can save a large amount of energy expenses for the construction of large-scale urban infrastructure. The product also has a longer service life than ordinary manhole covers, extending the resource depletion cycle.