Jonathan Erneborg and Simon Wester Hallberg presents their master’s thesis

Student: Jonathan Erneborg and Simon Wester Hallberg
Main Supervisor: Joakim Andersson
Examiner: Jim Brouzoulis
Opponent: Dayib Mohamed and Oskar Ligmajer

Abstrakt

Thule with their roots in Hillerstorp, Sweden, is a company that aids people in living an active lifestyle with the creation of their sport and outdoor goods. One of their products are bicycle carriers that are towbar-mounted on cars with coupling devices. Thule have on the market today three different coupling devices and seek to improve the clamping performance in the mid-range segment.
The aim of this project is to create a foundation for future solutions of towbar couplings that shall perform better than their current mid-range coupling, while also being cheaper and lighter than their current premium coupling.
To facilitate this, an investigation considering the contact interface between the coupling device and the towbar is conducted to gain findings in what makes a coupling device well-performing. The investigation is carried out using finite element simulations of various concepts developed in the project.
The result of the investigation is contact interface concepts that in theory are force efficient as well as handles the dimensional variations on towbars that are allowed according to the associated EU regulation.