Optimal Design of Wheelchair Drive Mechanism

This research entitle optimal design of wheelchair drive mechanism is to optimize the design of wheelchair drive mechanism. The wheelchair has become more than just a mean of transportation device. It has also become a tool for the disable people to carry out their lives and doing task everyday such as doing work especially. This shows that wheelchair must be reliable and has a long lasting service life in order to serve the disabled people better. Thus, the need of making the wheelchair to be more resistant to break due to heavy load, less difficulty in moving or user-friendly and better in terms of design The drive mechanism of a self-propelled wheelchair made up of the shafts, gears, ratchet, wheel, etc. to function properly. This project focused only on several part of the drive mechanism which is the shafts and gear mechanism.
The project focused on the optimization of the shafts and gear mechanism in terms of the best design while considering the objective of the optimization process. Apart from the optimization of the design, a simulation model will be created to aid in the design of the mechanism will be created and will serve as a tool in the future for designer who want to design an optimized shaft and gear mechanism. The project undergoes optimization in term of design parameters before the simulation can be created. The simulation produces result of optimized value of diameters of shaft and design specifications of gears using selected material. The results indicated a better suggestion of design parameters that should be taken account for the designer in order to maximize the capabilities of his design and selected materials. Even though the simulation can be run and produce optimized value, it is still not perfect as the simulation is not entirely universal to any shaft or gears design. Only certain size of shaft which is under the given ranges of calculated values can be run and the simulation only for spur gears type no other types of gears such as bevel, helical and etc. Further improvement need to be conducted for the simulation to achieved higher level of design.