Design of Automotive Sun Visor System

Abstract

In this study a semi-automatic passenger car sun visor has been designed. The aim for development of the new sun visor design is to protect passenger car driver from sun glare while driving considering the sun glare effect in various positions of sun .Conventional sun visor systems used in passenger cars are effective only when sun is high in the sky and these visor systems are required to be positioned manually. Various studies related to vehicle accidents have shown that the sun glare is most dangerous when sun is near to the horizon at the time of sun rise and sun set. Many studies have been done in the developments in the area of sun visor screens or also called sun visor extensions. In this study length and width of the visor has been ergonomically calculated for the car model chosen based on the anthropometric data for Indian population. Data for car interior dimensions has been borrowed from Porsche engineering services [29]. Indian anthropometric data has been borrowed from Indian institute of technology Guwahati’s website [28]. Modelling has been done according to the vehicle interior design terminologies and standards given by SAE and ARAI. The designing of the sun visor system is carried out in 3D CAD environment of Pro-E 5.0 (education version). The material selection for various components developed for the sun visor system has been done as per available ARAI standards. The analysis for testing the mechanical properties like stresses and deflections for the key components has been carried out in Pro-Mechanica and Ansys 14.0. The results for various iterations and the final designed components have been discussed in details in this thesis work. The analysis results for the final design of various components of the sun visor system are quite satisfactory and hence the designed model can be used as reference for creation of similar sun visor systems for other commercial and non-commercial vehicles.