F. Hendrix Noviyanto, Samsudin Anis
The toe cap is a substructure of safety shoes designed to protect the toes from impacts or compression load. This research goal is to define the toe cap design structures that meet the criteria. The criteria of the toe cap design structure must have the capability to withstand a compression load of 15 kN with minimum clearance as referred. Many materials for toe caps are available in the market, but metals and composites are the most popular. Steel is a metal that is generally widely used as a toe cap structure compared to aluminum and copper. Composite toe caps are becoming a trend besides steel toe caps. It's because composite toe caps are light in weight and have better characteristics in heat and electricity. The material candidates for the toe cap are steel, aluminum, composite carbon/epoxy, composite e-glass/epoxy, and composite kevlar/epoxy. The selecting material needs to be done to get the suitable material for the toe cap. The process of selecting materials is conducting by modeling and stress analysis of toe cap using MSC Patran/Nastran. The model for material selection is called Model A, with dimensions of 120 mm x 80 mm x 50 mm. Model A is a simple design with the corner on the edge of the toe cap design. The result shows that composite carbon/epoxy is a suitable material for the toe cap. Aside from model A, it also makes another model was called model B as an alternative design. Model B was designed based on model A by changing corners with fillets hope to have better stress distribution and reduction in weight. The process continues with running stress analysis for both models, and the result shows that Model B is favored over model A. Model B shows better stress distribution and reduction in weight by 5.7% than model A as the prediction. © 2023 Author(s).
Universitas Negeri Semarang, Gunungpati, Semarang, Indonesia
