As an engineer, you work for a company that makes mountain bicycles. Some bicycl
ID: 1710952 • Letter: A
Question
As an engineer, you work for a company that makes mountain bicycles. Some bicycles that have been in use for several years have had handlebars that failed by completely breaking off where the handlebar is clamped into the stem that connects it to the rest of the bicycle What is the most likely cause of these failures? Describe some of the steps that you might take to redesign this part and to verify that your new design will solve this problem. Repeat Prob. 1 4 for failures in the cast aluminum bracket used to attach the rudder of a small recreational sailboat.Explanation / Answer
1.4
Handle bars mainly fails due to the moment that caused due to eccentricity of the load from hands. If handle bar is very long from stem, It produces more eccentricity. hence more moment and more chances to fail at least loads. This is the main root cause of failing of bars.
So, when redesign is required, then we need to concentrate on decreasing the eccentricity on both sides of the stem. When we decrease the distance then very low chances to breakup off handle bars.
Another reason may occur due to usage of low quality material.
We need to ensure that we use high quality material to reduce the buckling failure of the handle. Otherwise it will buckle and ultimately fails. So, ensure the high quality.
High quality reduces the material volume and increase the stiffness.
1.5
As rudder of ship is in water, it requires heavy strength to sustain.
Aluminium has modulus of elasticity of 70 giga pascals which desides the stiffnes of the material. Which is less compared to steel. Hence large deflections will occur and ultimately fails.
If we need to redesign it, we can increase the size and thickness if aluminium has to be used.
Or else we can go for other materials like steel. As it is under water, we can go for stain less steel where we can avoid rust.(prepared by iron+carbon+chromium)
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