Head Restraint

[nishchint]

Please guide me as to how to verify that the restraint, mounting and attachments of the head restraint are strong enough to withstand a force of 890 Newtons.

Also what material to use while fabricating a seat. We are currently planning to use sheet metal mounted on a tube frame. It is working out to be quite heavy.Thank you.

[nishchint]

Please guide me as to how to verify that the restraint, mounting and attachments of the head restraint are strong enough to withstand a force of 890 Newtons.

Also what material to use while fabricating a seat. We are currently planning to use sheet metal mounted on a tube frame. It is working out to be quite heavy.Thank you.

[Richard Lewis]

Well you should be able to do some basic calculations on the head restraint with a 890N load applied... I don't really see what confusion you can be having over this, its a pretty straightforward carcluation. (at least to get something approximate... you know if you end up with a head restraint which is fine to 20000N you probably are overbuilding it)

As far as manufacturing a seat goes, we've had reasonable sucess with using plain sheet aluminum, bent where necessary. Consider using the bends in the sheet to add rigidity, its a much lighter method. For us, we use a lot of the firewall/cockpit sides to keep our driver in place. We don't really have a "seat" that can be removed per se.

-------------------------
UVIC Formula SAE Team
http://members.shaw.ca/drax77/UVICFSAEcar.jpg
http://uvic.fsae.ca

[James Waltman]

Head Restraint

890 Newtons is right in the neighborhood of 200 pounds (or in the neighbourhood of 91 kilograms for some of you). Find someone to stand on it and see if it holds up. Have them hold something heavy if they don't weigh enough. Some thin sheet metal should be strong enough without any trouble. It should be a very simple thing to experiment with. Try some things out and see what works. If it had to hold 890 kg then it might be worth some calculations.

James Waltman
waltmaj@cc.wwu.edu
http://dot.etec.wwu.edu/fsae/
Formula SAE
Vehicle Research Institute at
Western Washington University

[Phil1988]

SO is it important for the scrutineering? We laminated the head restraint. We did not calculate anything. Only from experiance and feeling.

So is it okay at the event when we can show some pictures of a tested restraint with the 91 kg on it?

regards Phil