Flood-proof sofa

Flood-proof sofa

Use your patio sofa as a flood barrier

Programme: Mechanical Engineering

Course: Project in MT2573 : Transformative PSS Innovation

Corporate partner: RESIST project

Challenge: Develop a solution to help mitigate the damages of floods

Solution: A patio sofa with integrated L-shaped flood barriers that can be deployed to protect your driveway from street floods. With the sofa fully deployed, an area of 6 m can be protected, to seal against the ground, EPDM seals around the underside edges were used.

Impact: From our needfinding we found that people are generally not interested in buying and storing flood protection equipment, so a multi-purpose solution was developed. Use it as a normal sofa most of the time, and when the flood comes, deploy it to protect your house.

Prototypes: A prototype was made in 1/4 of the real length to test how the product would seal against uneven ground, the frame of the sofa was made in wood, and the barriers were made out of polycarbonate, with EDPM-rubber seals.

Quotes from sponsor/partner: –

Project team:

  • Elias Forsenberg, MSC in Mechanical Engineering, class of 2020
  • Arthur Cambecedes, ERASMUS student, France
  • Remi Roger, ERASMUS student, France

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