Design and Optimization of a Wheelchair for Basketball using CAD

During last decades sport activities for disabled people are practiced by many and many athletes, both amateurs and professionals. In order to give the possibility to play safely a variety of sports, the equipments have to be designed with more care than those for able people. Many factors have to be taken into account: athletic performance, safety of both player and opponents, comfort and reliability. For this reason modern computer aided design methodologies seem to be a valid instrument to improve quality of equipments and fulfil the regulations as well. In this paper the authors describe the application of CAD-Multibody techniques to an optimization of a wheelchair for basketball. The target of the investigation is to give to the athlete the possibility to perform quick forward accelerations without rollover tendencies. For this purpose a chair with a self adjustable cushion has been designed. The behaviour of several mechanisms has been virtually simulated and compared: simple pendulum, slider-crank assembly and a combined-multilink. Performances have been assessed simulating the working operation using a virtual dummy embedded into CAD.