Child Safety Latch Project

This project was part of my Machine Elements and Fatigue course at UVA. The goal was to design a safety latch for a cabinet that was capable of being opened by applying a force downwards, but resist a child yanking the cabinet open.

Skills
Structural Analysis	ANSYS	CAD	MATLAB	Monte Carlo Simulations

Like most of my projects, the design of my latch heavily relied on rapid iteration through the use of programming (in this case MATLAB). After performing hand calculations, I was able to size the different aspects of my latch by writing a Monte Carlo simulation. After finding a range of suitable values using the simulation, the rest of the design was as simple as CADing up a model in SolidWorks and setting up a simulation in ANSYS. Because the calculations and my design were relatively simple, they matched up quite well to my ANSYS model.