The present invention relates to a shipping container, and more particularly, to the floor of a container. cl BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Containers were first used in cargo transportation in U.S.A in 1956. After more than 40 years' development, containers have been used worldwide. In the course of the development of the container, designers and manufacturers are devoted to improvements on its structure, so as to improve the functions of the container, reduce the material consumed and the production cost. As shown in
To pass the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) test for containers, the cross members need to be arranged in high density with quantities of beams, and the bottom cross members should be made of thick steel plates to satisfy the strength requirement, therefore, large quantity of material is consumed. In addition, the floor is made of special hard wood. On one hand, there exist several shortcomings such as: a great diversity in quality, expensive price, high cost, and easily influenced by possible shortage of plywood floor supplies. On the other hand, since it is thicker (28 mm) in thickness, the plywood floor is heavier in weight, and the tare weight of the container is heavier accordingly.
The main object of the present invention is to overcome the shortcomings of the conventional container, and by making improvements on its floor, to provide a container which is lighter in tare weight, less in material consumed and lower in production cost.
The aim of the present invention can be achieved as follows:
A shipping container comprising a pair of side walls, a rear end, a front end, a roof, a floor and a base frame; said base frame further comprising two longitudinal bottom side rails and numbers of parallel bottom cross members, wherein said floor is made up of corrugated steel floor.
As shown in
As shown in
Since steel is much better in synthetic mechanics performance than wood, and corrugated floor has good bending resistant capability, which are specially advantageous for satisfying loading requirements and application features of container floor, the corrugated steel floor 530 is better in mechanics performance and has higher load bearing strength than the prior art plywood floor. With the corrugated steel floor 530 adopted, thinner steel sheet and less material are required to achieve high bending resistant capability. Besides, the welding of the corrugated steel floor 530 with the bottom cross members 632 enhances the bending resistant strength of bottom cross members 632, reduces cross sectional dimension, weight and cost. The corrugated floor 530 according to this embodiment made of 2 mm thick steel sheet is good enough to meet strength requirement.
In the above base assembly, bottom cross members 632 and the corrugated steel floor 530 can be joined by many ways, and the two preferred ways are given below:
As shown in
In above structures, the cross sectional form of the bottom cross members 632 can be L-shape, I-shape, T-shape, U-shape, C-shape or rectangle shape to suit the demands of various base frames.
Compared to the prior art, the base assembly of this embodiment possesses following advantages.
(a) By substituting the prior art plywood floor with the corrugated steel floor, the rigidity and strength of the floor is enhanced, and thereby the load bearing capability of the base assembly is enhanced.
(b) Since the rigidity and strength of the corrugated steel floor is enhanced, the space between cross members are widened, and thereby the quantity and amount of cross members are reduced.
(c) Since the steel floor and cross members are welded into an integrated entity, the material around the welding spot will greatly enhance the bending resistant strength of the cross members.
Therefore, on the premise of passing ISO test, the thickness of the bottom cross member according to this embodiment is 3 mm thick, while it has to be 4˜4.5 mm thick for bottom cross members of the prior art base assembly. The use of corrugated steel floor improves the bending resistant capability of bottom cross members, that is why the amount and weight of bottom cross members in this embodiment is much smaller than that of the prior art base assembly.
To further meet the demands of various applications, make the surface of the corrugated floor as plain as the plywood floor for the ease of cargo loading the floor structure of this embodiment can be improved in following ways.
As shown in
Said non metallic stuffing filled in the grooves of the corrugated steel floor may be either continuously or incontinuously distributed along the grooves.
As shown in
In order to fasten the cargoes in the container, some pieces of wood or other non-metallic materials may be retained on the floor 530. Following improvements on the structure of the floor may be adopted:
As shown in
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The grooves with non metallic stuffing filled in may be or not be in a certain proportion to the grooves without non metallic stuffing filled in.
Alternatively, the steel floor may be common uniform corrugated steel floor, namely, the wavelength of each corrugation is equal to each other, where the grooves of the corrugated steel floor are made of the concavities of the corrugated steel floor itself, and the non metallic stuffing may be installed at intervals within the predetermined concavities.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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01256204.1 | Oct 2001 | CN | national |
02227395.6 | Apr 2002 | CN | national |
The present application is a further divisional application of patent application of Ser. No. 10/939,173 filed on Sep. 10, 2004 entitled A SHIPPING CONTAINER, which was a divisional application of a patent application of Ser. No. 10/200,786 filed on Jul. 22, 2002 and now abandoned entitled A SHIPPING CONTAINER.
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 10939173 | Sep 2004 | US |
Child | 11999327 | Dec 2007 | US |
Parent | 10200786 | Jul 2002 | US |
Child | 10939173 | Sep 2004 | US |