DEVELOP3D - Technology for the product lifecycle

Unbeknown to me being a female, a rather unpleasant phenomenon often occurs in the men’s urinal – splash back. Although many men may not realise it, conventional urinals routinely splash the user, the walls, the floor and potentially other users with urine.

This is due to a simple design flaw: fluid hitting a flat, perpendicular surface will always reflect back as splash. Many solutions to this problem have been proposed however, these generally aim to cure the symptoms (say, by catching the splash) rather than actually removing the fundamental problem. Goodwin Hartshorn have taken a different approach.

The London-based product designers originally approached sanitary-ware company Ideal Standard in 2005 with a new design for eliminating splash from conventional wall-hung urinals. The aim of the innovation, a central vertical ‘fin’ structure, was to ensure the fluid strikes the china tangentially rather than at 90 degrees to the surface. By doing this, surface tension causes the urine to cling to the surface rather than splashing off. Moreover, at such a shallow angle, any slight splashing is reflected away from the user, not back at them.

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