Anaconda-reaction, liquid-container/fuel-tank structure, and proective jacketing

Abstract

Anti-burst, anaconda-reaction liquid-container structure featuring both (I) a coating structure, per se, and (II), the overall organization of (A) a liquid container having a barrier wall with an outside surface, and, applied to the wall's outside surface, (B) coating structure possessing (1) a main body formed as a flexible expanse of anti-puncture-wound, self-sealing, high-elastomeric, material, and (2), embedded within, and distributed throughout, this expanse, (a) a population of distributed, container-contained liquid-reactive, liquid-imbiber elements, and (b) a web of restraining-fibre, expansion-following stretch-fabric

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims filing-date priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61 / 343,867, filed May 5, 2010, for “Anaconda-Reaction Liquid-Container / Fuel Tank Structure”. The entire disclosure content of this provisional application is hereby incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention pertains both to anti-explosion, anti-burst, protective, catastrophic-expansion-containing jacketing, or coating, for liquid containers, such as liquid-fuel containers, and to overall, so-protected liquid containers, per se. in particular, it focuses attention upon both (a) an overall liquid-container structure respecting which the environment (people, other structures, etc.) outside of that structure is protected against dangerous container bursting, and (b) upon coating structure, per se, which is employable, by way of container-outside-surface-application, to protect against an explosion / burs...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0005]Liquid fuel containers protected, in a self-sealing manner, against puncture-wound-induced leakage are known. Typically, such a container, in its protected configuration, takes the form of a generally rigid barrier wall (metal or plastic), the outside of which is coated with an added, self-sealing elastomeric coating—a coating which, in some applications, includes both (1) a main, elastomeric body mass, and (2) a body-mass-embedded distribution of particulate matter, formed specifically from liquid-reaction material designed to react to puncture-produced contact with leakage liquid fuel to produce a self-sealing (a) liquid-imbibing, (b) material-swelling, and / or (c) material-congealing action(s), thus to close the relevant puncture wound in cooperation with basic “elastomeric-material-return” sealing behavior. Wound closure results, in the case of a coating offering these features, usually, quite rapidly, and extremely effectively.

[0008]Such a coating arrangement, in the event of an explosion-like occurrence as mentioned above, allows the coating, and in particular its main, elastomeric body, to bulge safely, dramatically, dynamically and for the most part somewhat returnably, under the main-body-expansion-following, restraining control of the elastic-fibre fabric, without the main elastomeric body material, per se, tearing or bursting—much in the way—and now here using a free-form, visual analogy—that nature has equipped the anaconda to engorge huge objects, and then surface-bulge dramatically, without bursting. The main-body-included elastomeric fabric follows, rather than stubbornly resists, elastomeric expansion occurring in an explosion-initialed expansion of the main body elastomeric material, and furnishes important, internally-local material stabilization against dangerous tearing and fragmenting of the main-body material.

Problems solved by technology

However, with the occurrence of an explosion-like event involving bursting of a liquid fuel container, available anti-leak coatings of the type just generally described have often failed to hold together because of over-stressing, and companion “bursting”, or tearing, of the elastomeric material used in the coating, with the result that major problems result (loss of life, fire, massive property damage, etc.).

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