Detachable high heel shoe construction

The goal on this investigation was to develop a detachable high heel shoe construction that could enter the current high heel market. The impact of high heel shoes on women's fashion is enormous but there are associated issues of comfort and health with these shoes. This work aims to maintain the appealing aspects of a high heel shoe while adding a concealed mechanism to enable the heel to be easily removed to convert the shoe into a flat at the discretion of the user. The current solutions and products in the nearly 7 billion dollar a year women's shoe market are minimal. The prior arts of detachable heels fail to develop a simple comprehensive detachable high heel that can enter the market. A feasible and complete design that takes into account arch stiffness, heel removal, styling, and manufacturability is the goal of this work. This investigation deconstructed high heel shoes to learn and leverage the current high heel shoe infrastructure as a basis for adapting the shoe into a detachable high heel shoe construction. Three prototypes of the detachable high heel shoe were developed with a shoe assembly that consisted of a modified insole and a detachable heel that consisted of a dovetailed aluminum shank fastened to a high heel.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Morales, Alfredo Louis

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alexander H. Slocum.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40448

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40448