Design of a 3D Printed Bicycle Helmet Using Fused Deposition Modeling
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Date
2015-12-07
Authors
Cormier, Veronique
Friesen, Samuel
Olson, Ryan
To, Carl
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Abstract
Team 17 from MECH 4860 was tasked with designing a 3D printed bicycle helmet with an internal lattice structure that absorbs impacts. The goal was to produce a helmet design that is printed from one continuous material using fused deposition modeling (FDM). The helmet was to be designed as a general purpose road helmet. Precision ADM required the following deliverables: CAD models of the helmet’s design, which can be fully printed as a prototype, finite element analysis (FEA) of the helmet’s impact absorption capabilities, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of the helmet’s aerodynamic performance, and a complete budget for the helmet. The helmet was required to cost less than $1500 to produce. The team began with generating concepts for the internal lattice structure and overall helmet geometry that were screened and scored to obtain the final concepts. CAD models were developed to facilitate the FEA and CFD analysis. Dynamic, non-linear impact analysis was performed using ABAQUS/CAE to design the internal lattice structure to meet the CPSC standard for bicycle helmets. Star CCM+ was used to perform CFD analysis to evaluate the helmet’s drag and ventilation performance. The final helmet design is comprised of three swept segments containing an optimized lattice structure. To accommodate printing requirements, drain holes were implemented into the exterior shell of the helmet to ensure that the support structures can be dissolved after printing. The helmet is designed to be printed in polycarbonate (PC) and the final weight of helmet is 779 g. For the final product, the price of the helmet was estimated to be between $1380.27 and $1500.27.The impact FEA determined that the maximum deceleration of the head is 297g’s in a 6.2m/s impact on a flat surface, which is below the maximum value specified in the CPSC standard. From the CFD, the helmet has a drag coefficient of 0.4644 at a pitch angle of 45° and wind velocity of 30 km/h. The average velocity of the airflow through the vents is 22.469km/h at a wind speed of 30 km/h and pitch angle of 45°.