Application Research Of Finite Element Method On Corner Joints Design Of Solid Wood Chairs

With the decrease of timber resources, it’s an important subject of modern wood furniture design that how to fully make good use of timber resources and reasonably researching on furniture structural design. It can greatly improve the quality of furniture design, shorten design cycles, reduce costs of design and production that applying finite element method to furniture structural design.This study selected a removable solid wood chair as the research object, analysed the overall load and impact load with finite element method, and found the most vulnerable corner joint. Then analysed strength of the most vulnerable corner joint with finite element method, calculated the maximum stress, maximum strain and the corresponding location. What’s more, optimaly designed the structural strength of the most vulnerable corner joint with the ANSYS/APDL parametric design language, and obtained the optimal size design of the tenon of back rail and side rail from the corner joint structure. Finally, the result of finite element optimization design was carried out by mechanical experiments. The results were listed as follows:(1) The solid wood chair’s maximum stress and maximum strain were38.2MPa and5.769mm respectively in the case of the overall load, and the location was the junction of the back legs and rail; The solid wood chair’s maximum stress and maximum strain were40.5MPa and5.51mm respectively in the case of impact load, and the location was the junction of seat, back legs and rail. Therefore, it’s concluded that the most vulnerable corner joint of the solid wood chair was the junction of back legs and rail.(2) The maximum stress of the back rail of the most vulnerable structure of corner joint was located the junction of tenon ends and hardware, it got to128MPa; The maximum stress of the side rail was located the junction of tenon cheek and shoulder, it got to74.9MPa.(3) Optimaly designed the tenon size of back rail and side rail of the most vulnerable structure of corner joint with finite element method, the results shows:The timber volume of processing tenon of back rail with optimal design was less than with the original design, it’s reduced by14.3%, and the maximum stress was reduced by 38.2%; The timber volume of processing tenon of side rail with optimal design was less than with the original design, it’s reduced by62.5%, and the maximum stress was reduced by18%.(4) The verification test shows that the results of the finite element optimization design are consistent with the mechanical test.