A seat gets dusted off – such service. Thoroughness. Thought. Such Simon. Everything considered in a convoluted harmony. He’s a conductor and with a wave he’s capable of cueing his knowledge, skill-set, foresight, research and hard graft when and should it be needed. He sits, and we talk. His enthusiasm for the project is barely containable. “I’ve family ties to farming, and I myself suffered serious trauma from a motorbike accident which dislocated my hip from my spine,” Simon says, revealing part of the ‘why?’. “I still live with that so to me it’s a pressing issue and I know that serious injury plagues people for life. The agriculture industry is immensely affected by quad bike accidents so when I got the chance to be involved in the project I jumped.” Statistics revealed by ACC don’t fully reveal the true extent, he says, “In fact, many accidents don’t fit into the defined categories,” and he fears that true statistics could be as high as ten-fold that of any publicly released data. “So when I saw this opportunity, and I’m always looking for opportunity I couldn’t say no.” The team started off as 20-odd, dwindling at pace as the project for many was overshadowed by prior commitments. “It got to the point where I was the only one on the project. Unitec came to the party at the beginning of the final year of my automotive engineering degree, saying 'how about we give you a pathway to a Masters of Design',” he says, the quad bike fulfilling a desire for “more engineering” and the support of Assoc. Prof. Dr Jonathan Leaver and industry partners cementing it in his mind that he could in fact tackle the huge task. A year of research in quad bike safety followed, writing his undergraduate thesis on the topic; planting the seeds of knowledge that held good stead as the project evolved. “From the fundamentals I then built in functionality to act as interventions in quad bike accidents and loss of control events where the driver’s behaviour led to dour predicaments. It was a process. We discovered a few things about terramechanics and that’s when using a quad bike in its conventional form wasn’t an option,” he says. “To be honest, a quad bike isn’t actually designed for the New Zealand environment and that’s something I found out very early.” In New Zealand, two-thirds of the agricultural terrain is considered steep or mountainous and that is predominantly where accidents occur, so Simon designed his quad bike on that basis, while applications of the vehicle was also strongly considered. Key to the design and structure of the vehicle is that it is stable. Lateral stability was vital in the attempt to counter 60% of accidents where rollover occurs to the sides. Centre of gravity came into play and to achieve that it needed a self-levelling suspension, with the chassis or Simon Hartley displays the hydrogen cell. www.engineeringnews.co.nz 15 3D printing prototyping means that trials can be conducted before expensive parts need to be made.
EN-Oct16
To see the actual publication please follow the link above