Shape optimization design and material selection for a fitness equipment

Recently, engineers still pay attention to the design of bar structure. For their simple shape and simple manufacture process, a lighter and cheaper bar structure was demanded. As the bar structure is used widely in people’s daily life, there is a fairly useful example for bar structure design. In this project, the Finite Element Method (FEM) was applied to design the bar structures of the fitness equipment. The principle stress and deformation of the equipment by a load that simulate the body weight was predicted by the FEM software (ANSYS). According to the result, the requirement of the material properties was found. The Yield Stress must be lower than the maximum stress, which means this equipment will not be broken at the load. The thickness of the bar and the maximum principle stress was set for a parametric study. For this step, the minimum volume was found. There are many different ways to select an appropriate material. In this project, the CES Edupack was used to select the material