Dual position locking joint design for a medical walker

In this thesis we analyzed a joint created for a medical walker currently in the prototyping stage of development. The walker is designed to help a user stand up from a seated position. The joint holds two legs of the walker together in an 'x' shape. It must be able to lock in two positions and support the full weight of the user while he or she is getting up. We looked at four different locking mechanisms including a spring loaded pull pin, a friction bearing, a clutch, and an electronic solenoid. After weighing the pros and cons of each mechanism we recommend and present a design using the pull pin. In order to determine the strength and deflection of the loaded pin we modeled it both as a cantilevered beam, and a simply supported beam with three points of contact. We compared the hand calculations to FEA of solid models and found that modeling the pin as a simply supported beam is more accurate than the cantilever representation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Beecher, Eric M

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Warren P. Seering.

• 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/1721.1/59895

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/59895