Patent ID: 7025061
Filing Date: 2006-04-11
Classification: A61F,B33Y

Abstract:
1. A passive hearing protection earplug for being worn at least in part in am ear canal of a user, comprising a hard shell having an elasticity of from shore D 85 to shore D 65 and pulling means which are adapted for being manually operated by said user and which are provided at an outer end of said shell, said shell having an outer surface individually shaped according to a measured inner shape of said user's ear canal and outer ear, wherein said shell has a size and an outer shape which are adapted to enable said shell, when said earplug is worn in said user's ear canal in a sound attenuating position in which no external forces act on said shell, to tightly fit within at least an outer portion of said user's ear canal and within at least part of said user's concha and to tightly contact at least part of an inwardly oriented surface of a rim of said user's cavum of concha including a tragus, intertragic notch, antitragus and antihelix, and which are adapted to enable said earplug, when said earplug has been pulled outwardly by external forces acting axially on said pulling means from said sound attenuation position into a communication position in which said shell is released from a wall of said user's ear canal and concha for forming a sound communication gap between said wall of said user's ear canal and concha and said outer surface of said shell, which gap extends from an environment to said user's eardrum, with said rim of said user's cavum of concha being outwardly deformed by said shell in said communication position, to return into said sound attenuating position by elastic forces exerted by said outwardly deformed rim of said user's cavum of concha on said shell, wherein said shell's size and outer shape are adapted to enable said earplug to withstand, in said communication position, external pulling forces acting on said pulling means of at least 0.3 N without being removed from said user's ear canal by said pulling forces.