Failure Analysis and Redesign of Coach Seat Recliner Based on FEM

Failure happens when test carried on one kind of coach seat recliner, such as: gears of locking board were broken, plastic deformation takes place on end of fixing base. A finite element model was set up and numerical simulation was carried on under boundary conditions which are the same with experiment. Results show that the maximum stress occurred at the dedendum of the first gear of locking board, which fluctuated in the slider of fixing base and caused unsymmetrical stress distribution on the top and bottom surface of locking board. Then a new structure was put forward to solve this problem, and FEM was applied to the analysis the new structure. Results shows that the stress distribution of new design is more homogeneous and the maximum stress has come down by 25.9% to 455.2 MPa. This illustrated that the new design is better than the original one.