Design improvement of Sofa Structural Components based on load path analysis considering cost & weight efficiency

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Palliser is a top rated local manufacture designing and making high quality furniture. Furniture manufacturers like Palliser experience a constant challenge of designing and manufacturing high quality products that meet or exceed customer expectations while being cost effective for the business. To deal with this situation, Palliser is working on the product re-design to improve cost efficiency while keeping/improving the quality of the products with high stability and light weight. In this project, load transfer paths analysis of a sofa frame structure will be conducted to guide the structural design with enhanced loading capacity as well as cost and weight efficiency. A finite element model (FEM) of the structure will be built first. Different loading conditions with different soft materials attached to the frame will be considered and calibrated. A loading transfer path analysis tool, U*, is then applied to the static load analysis of the sofa frame FEM to find the exact load path transferring the applied load to different positions of the frame. With the guidance of the accurate load paths, we will have a new design of the sofa frame structure, and a prototype will be fabricated and tested. The new design is supposed to be with better structural strength and/or cost efficiency and guide the design of their similar products and structures. **********