This application is a U.S. National Phase of International PCT Application No. PCT/CN2019/071683 filed Jan. 15, 2019, which claims the benefit of Chinese Patent Application Serial No. 201811537111.0 filed Dec. 15, 2018, the contents of each application are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
The present disclosure relates to the field of bending technology for flexible panels, and more particularly, to an airbag assembly and a method for bending a flexible panel.
In recent years, there has been an increased interest in full screen display devices. For organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panels, pad bending technology can realize full screen effects through bending a bonding area of a flexible substrate in which a control chip is bonded to be behind a display panel.
While the bonding area is bent toward the back of the display panel, a bending area appears between the bonding area and a display area. Because a plurality of metal signal lines for transmitting signals are disposed between the bonding area and the display area, while the display panel is bent, the metal signal lines in the bending area are prone to break due to stresses, causing bad signal transmission so that the display panel can not display normally.
Therefore, it is necessary to provide an airbag assembly and a method for bending a flexible panel to solve the above problems.
A technical problem is that, while a display panel is bent, metal signal lines in a bending area are prone to break due to stresses, causing bad signal transmission so that the display panel can not display normally.
The object of the present disclosure is to provide an airbag assembly and a method for bending a flexible panel, which can avoid that metal signal lines break due to stresses and ensure that the display panel can display normally.
In order to realize the above object, the present disclosure provides an airbag assembly, configured to bend a flexible panel, including: a housing including at least one outlet and at least one inlet; a rubber film wrapping the housing to form a gas chamber, wherein the at least one outlet and the at least one inlet communicate with the gas chamber, wherein the gas chamber is inflated to cause the rubber film to inflate, and wherein the flexible panel is bent to a required curvature through the inflating rubber film; a gas source; a gas pipeline communicating with the gas source and the at least one inlet of the housing; a pressure sensor disposed in the gas pipeline; a pressure-adjusting valve connected to the gas source and the housing through the gas pipeline; and a controller electrically connected to the pressure sensor and the pressure-adjusting valve and configured to receive an output signal from the pressure sensor and to control the pressure-adjusting valve to be turned on and off.
In order to realize the above object, the present disclosure provides an airbag assembly, configured to bend a flexible panel, including: a housing including at least one outlet and at least one inlet; and an elastic film wrapping the housing to form a gas chamber, wherein the at least one outlet and the at least one inlet communicate with the gas chamber, wherein the gas chamber is inflated to cause the elastic film to inflate, and wherein the flexible panel is bent to a required curvature through the inflating elastic film.
In some embodiments, the airbag assembly further includes: a gas source; a gas pipeline communicating with the gas source and the at least one inlet of the housing; a pressure sensor disposed in the gas pipeline; a pressure-adjusting valve connected to the gas source and the housing through the gas pipeline; and a controller electrically connected to the pressure sensor and the pressure-adjusting valve and configured to receive an output signal from the pressure sensor and to control the pressure-adjusting valve to be turned on and off.
In some embodiments, the elastic film is a rubber film.
In order to realize the above object, the present disclosure provides a method for bending a flexible panel including a bending area and a terminal area adjacent to the bending area, the method including: providing an airbag assembly; inflating the airbag assembly; abutting against the bending area with the airbag assembly; and bending the flexible panel by pivoting on the airbag assembly so that a bent portion of the flexible panel tightly contacts a surface of the airbag assembly, and the terminal area is located behind the flexible panel.
In some embodiments, the airbag assembly includes: a housing including at least one outlet and at least one inlet; an elastic film wrapping the housing to form a gas chamber, wherein the at least one outlet and the at least one inlet communicate with the gas chamber; a gas source; a gas pipeline communicating with the gas source and the at least one inlet of the housing; a pressure sensor disposed in the gas pipeline; a pressure-adjusting valve connected to the gas source and the housing through the gas pipeline; and a controller electrically connected to the pressure sensor and the pressure-adjusting valve and configured to receive an output signal from the pressure sensor and to control the pressure-adjusting valve to be turned on and off.
In some embodiments, the step of inflating the airbag assembly includes: controlling, by the controller, the pressure-adjusting valve to be turned on; outputting, by the pressure sensor, a first signal when the pressure inside the gas chamber increases to a predetermined value; and receiving, by the controller, the first signal and controlling, by the controller, the pressure-adjusting valve to be turned off.
In some embodiments, the method further includes causing the airbag assembly to exhaust after the flexible panel is bent.
In some embodiments, the step of causing the airbag assembly to exhaust includes: controlling, by the controller, the pressure-adjusting valve to decompress; outputting, by the pressure sensor, a second signal when the pressure inside the gas chamber decreases to a predetermined value; and receiving, by the controller, the second signal and controlling, by the controller, the pressure-adjusting valve to stop decompressing.
In some embodiments, the flexible panel includes bonding terminals disposed in the terminal area.
In some embodiments, the flexible panel includes a plurality of metal signal lines passing through the bending area.
The beneficial effect of the present disclosure is that, the airbag assembly and the method for bending the flexible panel are provided to avoid that the metal signal lines break due to stresses and to ensure that the display panel can display normally.
To ensure the features and the technical content of the disclosure are more apparent and easier to understand, please refer to the explanation and the accompanying drawings of the disclosure as follows. However, the accompanying drawings are merely for reference without limiting the disclosure.
To ensure the objects, the technical solutions, and the effects of the disclosure are clearer and more specific, the disclosure will be explained in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in detail further below. It should be understood that the embodiments described herein are merely a part of the embodiments of the present disclosure instead of all of the embodiments and not used to limit the disclosure.
Please refer to
As shown in
Please refer to
Also referring to
Continuing to refer to
Step S01: providing the airbag assembly 1 shown in
Step S02: inflating the airbag assembly 1. In an embodiment of the present disclosure, as shown in
Step S03: abutting against the bending area BA with the airbag assembly 1 (as shown in
Step S04: as shown in
Step S05: causing the airbag assembly 1 to exhaust after the flexible panel 2 is bent. As shown in
In conclusion, the present disclosure provides the airbag assembly and the method for bending a flexible panel mainly by providing the airbag assembly to support the bent portion of the flexible panel while the flexible panel is bent in order to avoid that the metal signal lines break due to stresses and to ensure that a display panel can display normally.
It should be understood that the application of the present disclosure is not limited by the foregoing examples. A person of ordinary skill in the art is able to make modifications or changes based on the foregoing description, and all of these modifications and changes are within the scope of the appended claims of the present disclosure.
The industrial applicability of the present disclosure is that, the airbag assembly is provided to support the bent portion of the flexible panel in order to avoid that the metal signal lines break due to stresses and to ensure that the display panel can display normally.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
201811537111.0 | Dec 2018 | CN | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
PCT/CN2019/071683 | 1/15/2019 | WO |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO2020/118840 | 6/18/2020 | WO | A |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
4047870 | Smaldone | Sep 1977 | A |
4126659 | Blad | Nov 1978 | A |
6533986 | Fosaaen | Mar 2003 | B1 |
8556618 | Bergmann | Oct 2013 | B2 |
9349969 | Kwon | May 2016 | B2 |
10074673 | Choi | Sep 2018 | B2 |
10111349 | Xu | Oct 2018 | B2 |
10343312 | Kawaguchi | Jul 2019 | B2 |
10461273 | Andou | Oct 2019 | B2 |
10756125 | Jiang | Aug 2020 | B2 |
11367860 | Zhang | Jun 2022 | B2 |
20050276874 | Menaldo | Dec 2005 | A1 |
20170148826 | Choi | May 2017 | A1 |
20180116061 | Xu | Apr 2018 | A1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
105009188 | Oct 2015 | CN |
105405363 | Mar 2016 | CN |
205177319 | Apr 2016 | CN |
106205396 | Dec 2016 | CN |
107067978 | Aug 2017 | CN |
107316568 | Nov 2017 | CN |
107481622 | Dec 2017 | CN |
107680490 | Feb 2018 | CN |
108364602 | Aug 2018 | CN |
108615464 | Oct 2018 | CN |
108615466 | Oct 2018 | CN |
108877519 | Nov 2018 | CN |
109300401 | Feb 2019 | CN |
20180066378 | Jun 2018 | KR |
2010082357 | Jul 2010 | WO |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20210358864 A1 | Nov 2021 | US |