3D Geometry of a Carabiner- Design Report

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Computer-Aided Engineering
Design Report
Date
Words
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

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Carabiners find their most applications in rope-intensive activities including sailing,
caving, climbing, industrial, and construction for harnessing and suspending people or other
objects. In most of these applications, the carabiners are always in tension1. This means that they
should be designed to accommodate large tensional forces before they fail.
During design, it is important to simulate the prototype to access the desired output
before production. This process is termed as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and it helps the
designers to access the component mechanical properties before it hits the real-life application2.
In this assignment, a 3D geometry of a carabiner is subjected to virtual loading using Solidworks
software. The geometry is as shown in the figure below.
Figure 1: Carabiner geometry
1D. Harutyunyan and J. Boyer. On ideal dynamic climbing ropes. Proceedings of the Institution
of Mechanical Engineers, Part P: Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology, 2017, 231(2),
pp.136-143.
2 K. Pawel. Finite element analysis for design engineers. SAE, 2017.

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The proposed material for the component is Alloy Steel. Depending on the alloying
elements, the steel can achieve desirable properties such as improved strength while maintaining
ductility when alloyed with Vanadium and Silicon3. A force of 20KN is applied to the loading
face in the direction shown in figure 1 and the component if fixed at the bearing face.
Appropriate fixtures that would replicate the real-life application would be fixed and
roller or slider. With the fixed fixture, the carabiner is held at a fixed position by application of
tensile forces at its extreme ends.
Real-time load application depends on the application. In an ideal situation, the forces are
applied in two or one directions only. However, in real-life applications, the loading can take
different orientations as shown in the figures below.
Figure 2: Tensile application Figure 3: Fixed end application
3 S. Gadadhar and A. Saxena. "Effect of strain rate, soaking time and alloying elements on hot
ductility and hot shortness of low alloy steels." Materials Science and Engineering. 2018, 292-
300.