Redesign Of ZIGZAG Chair By Fiber Reinforced Plastics: Fusing Product Design And Engineering

This study is the application of new design method for integrating the product design (styling and functional design) and the engineering design (strength design of structure), which can make the best use of the composite materials’ characteristics obtained by the experiment and the analysis. Among them, the carbon fiber reinforced composite plastics (CFRP) have excellent high strength and lightness. Here, using these materials’ characteristics, ZIGZAG Chair made from wood, which had the refined style, was redesigned by CFRP. In this redesign process, the engineering point of view was used as a new proposed design method. The designed ZIGZAG Chair was manufactured by hand lay-up molding of CFRP according to analytical results, and its styling and strength were evaluated. The analytical results, that is, strength and displacement, were in good agreement with the pilot model’s one.