Design and Analysis of Lifting Mechanism on Wheelchair Seat to Transfer to Bed and Car Seat
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Date
2019
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Wheelchair is a mobility gadget designed to be replacement for walking, moving physically
disabled people ( having injuries in their legs and arm) from one place to other with the help of
attendee or by means of self-propelling. The wheelchair is divided into two categories based on
the power used mobility: manually powered wheelchair and electrically powered wheel chair.
This research typically focuses on design of lifting mechanism on wheelchair seat for easy
transfer of users to bed and car seat. The aim is to design a portable wheelchair that can allow the
user to transfer and lift him/her-self into a bed, car seat and finally place it at his/her side without
having someone to help out. More specifically the designed wheelchair has to move
upward/downward to come to a level with the bed and car seat.
The design stage initiated by gathering of literature review about the proposed design to know its
development and defect from past to present day existing wheelchair designs. Different
methodologies have been proposed based on human anthropometric data and test for
improvement of lifting mechanism of the wheelchair to maximize the utility of the chair. The
conventional method of using care givers to reach optimum height of the wheelchair encounter a
lot of limitation (time and energy consumption, comfort, weight of patient that can be carried
etc.). In this Research paper manually operated hydraulic scissor lift has been designed and it
will be attached to the wheelchair seat. The geometry and joints of this mechanism were
carefully arranged so that only one actuator needs to be controlled, enabling the wheelchair user
to adjust the seat using manually operating hand pedal that can rise and lower the hydraulic
scissor lift. On the theoretical part; the material selection, brief description of the proposed
design, cylinder selection and hydraulic control system description were done.
The geometrical design; each component of the mechanism was designed using SOLIDWORK
software, the hydraulic control system design was done using FLUID SIM software, the dynamic
analysis and functionality simulation testing of the lifting mechanism of the design were done
using MATLAB and ANSYS WORKBENCH soft wares. Finally, by comparing with the
existing manual wheelchairs and survey data‟s about existing wheelchair standard sizes , the
proposed mechanism design was comfortable and easily operated with less effort from patients
having a seat lifting mechanism than can rise up to a height of 0.3m with a maximum load of
150Kg, which will increase the existing cost by 2500-3000ETB. It was intended to increase the
independence of the end user while transferring to bed and car seats. Validation of the design
was done and usage is found satisfactory.
Description
Keywords
Car Seat, Lifting Mechanism, Wheelchair Seat, Bed and Car Seat