CRwheel: equipamento para personalização de cadeiras de rodas de corrida

Abstract

Wheelchair racing within paralympic athletics is the main modality. Older wheelchairs racing in comparison to current wheelchairs are very di erent being, presently, called sporting or high-performance wheelchair. Actually, companies are using athlete anthropometry for sports wheelchair customized like wheelchairs manufacture guide. Normally, this process requires special expertise to t postural adjustment knowledge in function of injury. Indirectly, these analyzes have association with played sport. Therefore, after customizing measures, athlete must wait for manufacturing time of sports wheelchair. In this phase, design changes are impossible to carry out making subjective the analysis and requiring a lot of time. The goal of this work is to design an equipment for racing wheelchairs customization called CRwheel. Several measurements and adjustments considering the athletes anthropometry characteristics can be done and, at the same time, the best settings and performance during handrim propulsion simulating one or more resistance conditions imposed can be evaluated by the athlete and professionals. Solidworks Platform for structural analysis to the CRwheel and evaluation through nite element modeling were used. Di erent settings like parametrization condition in Autodesk Inventor software were also developed. Two versions for conventional racing wheelchairs were done. Finite element analysis showed that the structure is suitable for athletes up to 180 kgf weight. It is possible adjust up to 22 di erent settings using the CRwheel that can be adjusted directly into the customized structural design to the racing wheelchair and, thus able to introduce an automation process that can minimizing manufacturing time allowing for the athlete, view in loco, operation of their future race wheelchair.