Development and simulation of a safety bracket for a safety system

This thesis report aims to help the client developing their new product. The new product to be developed is a safety bracket for a safety system. The safety bracket connects different parts which create the safety system and it should be able to withstand impacts from moving objects. The client has a set of requirements that needs to be addressed during the product development process. One of the most important requirements that must be fulfilled is the given impact energy that the safety bracket must withstand. The methodology used during this thesis work is the product development processes (PDP). The product development process is used to find concepts that have the potential to answer the research questions and to fulfil the requirements. Some methods used in the product development process are brainstorming, brainwriting and combining working principles. The concepts were evaluated with a combination of Pugh´s matrix and weighting matrix. The three best concepts were selected for further development and tested with FEA simulation with Abaqus CAE. The impact simulation gave indications if the concepts could handle the impact energy and if they could fulfil the requirements. All three concepts could withstand the impact energy based on the simulations and most of the requirements could be fulfilled. The concepts with thinner profile walls had a reduction in stress and an increase in impact duration, where the kinetic energy is distributed throughout the impact. A protective shell helps with the reduction of stress and the energy absorption during the impact simulation