Appeal 2006-1708
Application 10/186,253
1 Appellants’ invention relates to an evaporator with air fin pattern that
2 provides an enhanced drainage of water condensate between the fin walls and out
3 of the evaporator, without degrading the performance of the evaporator
4 (Specification 4).
5 Claims 1 and 2 are the only independent claims and read as follows:
6 1. In an evaporator (10) having substantially parallel, substantially
7 vertically oriented refrigerant flow tubes (12), said tubes having
8 opposed pairs of surfaces (14) spaced apart by a distance c, between
9 which tube surfaces (14) corrugated air fins (16) are located, said fin
10 corrugations comprised of V-shaped fin walls (18) diverging from and
11 joined at integral sharp crests having a radius r and a fin pitch p, said fin
12 walls (18) also comprising louvers (22) having a length l, characterized
13 in that
14 said tube surface spacing c, crest interior radius r, fin pitch p, and
15 louver length 1 have the following relationships:
16
17 0 < r/c < 0.057
18 0.89 < l/c < 1.01
19 0.29 < p/c < 0.43.
20
21 2. In an evaporator (10) having substantially parallel, substantially
22 vertically oriented refrigerant flow tubes (12), said tubes having
23 opposed pairs of surfaces (14) spaced apart by a distance c, between
24 which tube surfaces (14) corrugated air fins (16) are located, said fin
25 corrugations comprised of V-shaped fin walls (18) diverging from and
26 joined at integral sharp crests having an interior radius r and a fin pitch
27 p, said fin walls (18) also comprising louvers (22) having a length 1,
28 characterized in that
29
30 0.25 mm < r < 0.58[1] mm
31 0.89 < l/c < 1.01
1 The claims list the range for r as 0.25 mm < r < 0.058 mm. This is not a valid
range of values. Appellants have defined the range for r as 0.25 mm to 0.58 mm
(Specification 13:24-29; Br. 12:18).
2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013