Determining the Material and Shape of Components within a System Attached to a Wheelchair

Abstract

The wheelchair has become today indispensable for people experiencing various locomotor disabilities. By investigating the current concepts of solutions to improve the ability to move physically, it was attempted to propose a typology to address the mobility problem. On a basic manual wheelchair, a system will be attached to ensure overcoming the obstacles and to guarantee maintaining the stability of the entire wheelchair. This adjustment will improve the user independence and offer the option of attaching a group of wheels to facilitate smooth movement. By using the Ashby’s graphs that compare the ratio between different properties and by calculating the material index, the optimum material will be determine for the developed system.Ansys software was used to study the structural behaviour under the given boundary conditions by determining the total deformation and equivalent Von Misses stress and then comparisons were made between the obtained results. Also, through topology optimization the most strained areas were discovered and measures were proposed to remedy them.