BME.16 – Improved Shower Transfer Device
Team Members Heading link
- Nazilya Guliyeva
- Emily Park
- Alisha Rizvi
- Vaishnavi Vanamala
- Aditi Wadhwa
Project Description Heading link
For individuals with mobility limitations, showering is an essential but dangerous activity that poses serious risk for injury. The goal of this project is to design an improved shower transfer system for individuals with mobility limitations that addresses the lack of current market options applicable to shower stalls as opposed to bathtubs. Presently, several solutions prevent shower stalls from fully closing, allowing water to escape to the bathroom floor thereby posing risk of slipping and falling. There is a need, including for the project’s sponsor, for a shower transfer system that minimizes water escaping for those with a shower stall. The solution, an improved shower transfer device, aims to address the sponsor’s needs, but also the broader population of individuals with physical limitations. The proposed design contains two main components: an in-shower portion and a portion that detaches after the transfer process allowing for the door to close. A telescoping mechanism with button clips allows these components to lock together. The high fidelity prototype was constructed using a retrofitted shower transfer device, additional legs and 3D-printed components to add stability. This design is important because it will give individuals with mobility limitations that use shower stalls a safer option to accomplish this daily task. The verification procedure includes a stability testing protocol, where multiple trials will be run to measure the static coefficient of the high fidelity prototype under three different wetness conditions, to simulate the shower setting. Those experimental coefficients will be compared using a one-way ANOVA. Following this, a simulation to test four different loading conditions under each wetness condition will be performed to find the frictional force. By constructing a device specifically designed for shower stall users, we hope to introduce a novel product that could be used to ease the daily lives of users.