Claims
- 1. A resilient, shock-absorbing, heel element for a shoe comprising:a) a flat connecting layer lying in a plane at an outer surface of the heel element; b) a plurality of substantially dome-shaped, hollow protuberances of elastomeric material integral with the flat connecting layer at an opposite outer surface of the heel element and bounding internal air-containing voids extending away from one side of the plane, each protuberance having a transverse dimension; and c) a channel network formed in the flat connecting layer and extending among the protuberances for establishing an air flow among the voids, the network including a plurality of longitudinal channels linearly extending in mutual parallelism between successive ones of the protuberances along respective rows each extending along a longitudinal direction, and a plurality of transverse channels linearly extending in mutual parallelism between the longitudinal channels along respective columns each extending along a transverse direction which is generally perpendicular to the longitudinal direction, at least some of the longitudinal channels intersecting some of the transverse channels, the successive ones of the protuberances along a respective row being spaced apart by a spacing which is less than said transverse dimension of a respective protuberance to enable the air flow to flow freely among the voids.
- 2. The resilient element as defined in claim 1, and further comprising walls bounding a compartment in which the element is contained, said compartment having an open port through which air passes into and out of the internal voids.
- 3. The resilient element as defined in claim 1, wherein the rows are staggered relative to one another.
- 4. The resilient element as defined in claim 1, wherein each protuberance lies at an intersection of a respective row and a respective column.
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a division of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/882,585, filed Jun. 25, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,041,519.
US Referenced Citations (10)