Concurrent Design and Prototyping of Composite Accelerator Pedal

In this work, Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach has been used to determine the most optimum decision on design concept and material of the composite accelerator pedal at conceptual design stage. Comprehensive studies are carried out to prepare the design specifications of composite accelerator pedal. Various design concepts are generated using the Morphological approach. In particular at design stage, CATIA is used to generate various design concepts followed by analysis on ANSYS. Simultaneously, material selection is done on the basis of past research & specifications. Rating/weighting matrix evaluation method is used to select the best concept for the profile of pedal arm on the basis of mass, volume, stress and deformation results achieved on ANSYS. The composite accelerator pedal is optimized and analyzed for safety parameters and finally prototyped using Selective Laser Sintering. The results reveals the feasibility of composite accelerator pedal with glass filled polyamide providing substantial weight saving and better properties than existing metallic pedal.