Competencies - April 2015

A work of art

The invention of the Whirlspray shower technology

Together engineers Maurus Zwicker and Rolf Weiss developed a nozzle unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

As with all shower toilets, the spray nozzle is also the secret star of the show on the Mera. The showpiece from Geberit AquaClean would of course not be possible without the wealth of other special features – like the TurboFlush flush technology, the hybrid hot water system or the integrated odour extraction unit. However, there is no getting away from the fact that the spray nozzle is a key piece of the puzzle.

An engineering master stroke
With the goal of creating a nozzle that has the same cleaning effect as its predecessor Geberit AquaClean 8000, with less water while preferably also offering even greater comfort, it was clear that the product developers had to come up with something groundbreaking and revolutionary. The two engineers Maurus Zwicker and Rolf Weiss managed to accomplish this feat, working closely together in developing a nozzle unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

Developer Maurus Zwicker (left) came up with the geometry for the small parts and micro components, and hydraulics expert Rolf Weiss simulated the flow behavior.

Diverting and rotating
“We must have run through around a hundred versions on screen and got our colleagues from prototype construction to produce 25 of them as models, which we then tested under real-life conditions,” says Maurus Zwicker. The sphere principle ran out as the undisputed champion of the competition. “The force of the water could be best diverted from the horizontal to the vertical with this principle,” explains Rolf Weiss. By the end of the mammoth project the idea had taken on concrete shape, with the engineers finally opting for two tiny hollow spheres to divert the direction of the water and also set it rotating. The idea of enriching the water jet with air came along at a later stage. And with that, the sincepatented WhirlSpray shower technology was born.