Track: Senior Design Project / FYP Competition

Abstract

Cars stuck in remote places may lead to catastrophic consequences, especially with the lack of suitable tools and the lack of food or water. most of the drivers may not know how to deal with a sticking situation, especially in a place where there is no one to help. Some even pass away because the help arrives too late. All these motivate us to think about a simple mechanism which could be installed in the car which could be battery operated to get the car away from the sticking spot. The proposed mechanism will run for many purposes, but it will mainly focus on getting the car out of its stuck. The mechanism will first lift the car a reasonable distance above the sticking place and after that, the car will be moved forward or backward. The mechanism will be fitted on the lower side of the chassis of the car, which is not that room taking, and it will be operated by the same car battery, or any external DC current whenever needed. The two prime movers of the two motions in the mechanism are operated and controlled by a hydraulic system. The goal of our design is to build a mechanism that is reliable, safe, and easy to operate compared to its function. The methodology we followed was to set the components of the mechanism with the right dimensions which fits certain categories of safari cars. Second, the mobility of the proposed mechanism was calculated to come up with enough inputs to fully control the motion of the mechanism. After that the force analysis was conducted at the worst position of for the best follow up design. Because of the limited time, we used two commercial codes to conduct the stress analysis for the stress validation purpose, where the Von Miss’s theory of failure is adopted. Choosing the type of weld, materials and international standards is part of the methodology as well. As the project is still in progress, we are planning to manufacture a full-scale model and conduct some practical tests and hoping the success of the proposed mechanism to we can benefit our community and the international society as well.