Kinetic Flooring

My work at Pavegen caught the attention of BBC Persian Click, who came to the workshop in December 2024. I walked them through the Pavegen system and some of the new innovations I’d been working on, including the new substructure I’d developed and integrating solar power into the system, as well as talking to them about sustainability at Pavegen and in the industry.

Research

• Market research

• Technology research

Design

• Snap fits

• Design for Manufacture and Assembly

• Scalable design

• IP-ratings

• Integration with electrical components

The Brief

“Redesign the installation method of our flooring to reduce costs (material, delivery and assembly), reduce the environmental impact, and improve the finish of the product.”

the project

Pavegen’s existing flooring was installed in a very rigid way, with pretty much every component designed to fit precisely together. Whilst this “worked” for smaller flooring arrays, across larger arrays any imperfections in manufacture or assembly would stack together, making the flooring very difficult to fit together. Additionally, the flooring consisted of many confusing parts - including large and heavy GRP sheets and confusing folded steel frames, which was never clear how each part was intended to fit together.

I set out to design a new installation system - still using the same generators and tiles - that would be functionally identical for the end-user, but solve all of these problems and more behind the scenes. I set out to make the flooring more easily scaled, more intuitive to put together, and cheaper to manufacture and deliver and quicker and easier to install, all whilst reducing the environmental impact.

Existing System Analysis

The existing installation system consisted of the following layers, bottom to top:

1. Plastic pedestals, to keep the flooring level on an uneven surface (cheap and prone to breaking)

2. Aluminium joists to support the GRP sheets (needed to be precisely cut for alignment, with no tolerance accounted for or thermal expansion/contraction taken into account, extensive grid under whole array)

3. GRP sheets to locate the generators (waterjet cut, very expensive, very unintuitive which sheet goes where, large and heavy and imprecise, also no tolerance accounted for)

4. Steel frames (picture frame the array, poor finish aesthetically, unintuitive which frame goes where, imprecisely made)

New system Analysis

The assembly of the new system I designed went as follows:

1. Plastic pedestals keep the floor level as before, and now also directly support the generators, but a new supplier, with more durable pedestals and sound absorbing features

2. Custom extruded aluminium joist around the perimeter to keep the flooring together and with a snap feature for the perimeter stronger than the old joists, and only necessary around the perimeter

3. Custom extruded aluminium perimeter pieces, with a durable powder coated finish and fewer variations for easier installation, that snap fit into the joist and enable an LED strip to be integrated easily

Prototyping

Flooring Perimeter

Around the outside edge would be a custom aluminium extrusion designed specifically for the Pavegen system. The purpose of this extrusion would be to provide a frame to hold support the rest of the floor. It was designed to snap fit into off-the-shelf pedestals from a partner manufacturer, with a separate extrusion snap fitting into it, to allow for either an LED strip around the perimeter or a flat surface, depending on the requirement of the customer.

The aluminium extrusion was manufactured from recycled aluminium for a minimal environmental impact through a trusted supplier based in Turkey, who manufactured their own aluminium billets well as doing the extrusions, with their own solar panel farm powering the factory.

Generator Supports

When I first joined the company, the plan was to support the generators themselves on a custom made, injection moulded pedestal. This would have required a huge tooling investment (tens of thousands of pounds), with large minimum order quantities necessary from the supplier. I suggested a simple design change could be made to the generator housing instead, allowing them to fit on existing off-the-shelf pedestals. The generators already had a small cylindrical boss protruding from the base, by increasing its diameter generators could fit perfectly in between the tabs on the pedestals.

The same size billet would be used and the same processes (just to a slightly different diameter), meaning there was no change in part cost. As the generator housings were CNC-machined in small batches, this design change could simply be applied to the next batch, and still be backwards compatible with the existing installation system. For existing generators, a simple adapter piece could be manufactured from leftover GRP that was used for the existing installation system, ensuring that material did not go to waste.

Installation

The new installation structure was installed for the first time at Sports Boulevard in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Pavegen’s largest project ever. This was only possible due to the new design, which lowered shipping costs, reduced installation time, and allowed for scalability up to this size.

• 5 separate flooring arrays

• 51.3 m total length

• 71.8 sqm total area

Impact

For a tooling investment of only four figures, all of this could be achieved. This represented a return on investment of only a single ~20sqm array, which ended up being more than covered by a single project.

• Part cost: 17% cheaper

• Environmental Impact: 33% reduction in kgCO2e

• Assembly Time: 67% quicker

• Part weight: 19% lighter

• Number of parts: 26% fewer

• Number of screws: 63% fewer

• Maximum size: Increased from 10m to unlimited

• Noise: 80% quieter