Högskolan i Skövde

This thesis work is focused on the design of a mechanism for the passenger’s seat of a Volvo S80. This mechanism will facilitate the problems arised when somebody with limited mobility, either permanent or temporal, is entering or exiting the vehicle.

The main aim is to obtain an affordable device that enhances the life of those with reduced mobility, but paying special attention to those who do not receive any kind of economical help from the government. The idea is to be able to move the seat to the outside of the car so that one can seat with no special effort. Then, the mechanism, manually, performs the movements to bring it back to the inside. The concept of being manual is to avoid electronic devices that will surely increase the cost.

In this project, a possible design solution has been developed. A model was created with Autodesk Inventor 2012. The three basic positions of the mechanism were studied to determine the structural behavior of the product. For these studies, a load compensating the weight of a human was applied and the stresses and the deformation were analyzed by Finite Element Methods and the study was concluded when the safety factor was over 2.