This report is the result of thesis work within the Bachelor of Engineering: Production andProduct Design program, with a focus on product development, at Mälardalen University. Itwas carried out in collaboration with Westinghouse Electric Company, a leading player in thenuclear power industry with its factory in Västerås, Sweden. The project aimed to improvethe handling and working environment for operators during the assembly of the VVER 1000bottom support.The existing bottom support weighs 20.5 kg and has a safety factor of 1.12. It is manuallylifted by operators multiple times a day. The primary purpose of the work was to provide aproposal for a new weight-optimized design that complies with the Swedish WorkEnvironment Authority’s recommendation to avoid repeated lifting of loads over 15 kg. Twodifferent design proposals were created with safety factors of 2 and 3. By applying topologyoptimization and an iterative design process, the most suitable design alternatives wereidentified to achieve these goals.The results of the work are presented, discussed and compared to the existing bottomsupport. The greatest weight reduction was achieved with the design for safety factor 2which weighs 9.95 kg, representing a 50% improvement compared to the existing support,while the safety factor has increased to 2.27, resulting in a 103% improvement.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mdh-67844 |
| Date | January 2024 |
| Creators | Ramström, Albin, Jimmy, Lindström |
| Publisher | Mälardalens universitet, Akademin för innovation, design och teknik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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