MM4GDM Group Design & Make Project

Crash!

Aim

This project involved the design and make of a mechanism to stop a 100kg sled of a crash track at
accelerations of up to 100g. The customer has an existing stopping mechanism but is limited by the cost of
manufacture of disposable components and the long amount of time taken (up to 3 hours) to reset the sled.
The mechanism must allow the shape of the acceleration pulse to be programmed the minimum
requirements are to deliver constant and ramped acceleration pulses. Likewise running costs should be
minimal or zero and the reset time should be very short.

Concept
The hydraulic buffer system consists of a plunger with a metering pin
fixed to the end, housed inside a cylinder submerged with hydraulic
fluid. When the sled impacts the buffers head, the plunger is displaced,
forcing hydraulic fluid through an orifice and dissipating the kinetic
energy of the sled into thermal energy in the oil. The metering pin
regulates the flow of oil through the orifice and the resultant force
exerted on the sled by the buffer can be controlled by modifying the size
of the gap between the orifice and the plungers metering pin. This was
done by changing the profile of the metering pins cross-sectional area.
Different sections of the metering pin are different sizes depending on
the mass and speed of the sled that is being tested.

Programming

Figure 1: The hydraulic buffer

braking system

The formula derived for the relationship between the size of

the metering pin and the resultant force against the motion
of the sled was modelled using MATLAB and SIMULINK. This
enabled plots of acceleration pulse graphs to be created over
the duration of impact as a function of the metering pin
profile.
Figure 2: Extract from the SIMULINK model

A MATLAB function allowed arbitrary values of the metering

pin radius to be entered for different displacements of the
piston head, x, during impact.
Each variable comprising the resultant force equation was
converted into SIMULINK and this was linked directly to the
MATLAB function.

Figure 3: Table of metering pin profiles

Results of Prototype Testing

Values of the metering pin radius were changed for different

sled masses to see how this affected the force, acceleration,
velocity, displacement. By iteration, constant and ramped
force/acceleration profiles were found.
A table of metering pin profiles was collated.

Design
Blockconnector

Orificeplate&
reservoirconnector

Frontmount&locks
Forcetranslationrods
Bufferhead
Emergencystopbuffers&
squarebeams
Hingemechanism
Front&backsupports
Reservoirbag
Hydrauliccylinder

Department of Mechanical, Materials & Manufacturing Engineering