Study of failure phenomena on Proton Waja's door handle / Mohd Lukman Awg. Noh

The nation's automotive industries have increased tremendously during the recent years. In Malaysia, Proton is one of the automotive industries companies which are top among the Malaysian car users. As a manufacturer of Waja car, Proton basically has improved their research and development in order to ensure that Waja car satisfies the highly standard for quality. However, customers have been facing many problems since the first model was launched. The problems include electrical system, body, power window and door handle. Door handle failure is one the major problems which frequently occur on Waja's car and this failure can impact the overall satisfaction of the users. In order to get better understanding on the failure mechanism of the door handle, failure analysis is required to determine causes so that changes can be made to minimize the failure. Finite element approach is used in the study by using CATIA. The density test also performed to justify the failure phenomena on Proton Waja's door handle. This project also investigates how to reduce failure phenomenon of Waja's door handle. There are several approach have been made in order to minimize the problems. It includes thickness and diameter modification, material modification and some concentration in parameters of injection molding process. It is found that, by increasing the thickness, the stress concentration at the failure area reduced. Material selection also has an important implication on the door handle performance. It is because the proper material properties reduce the possibility of failure on door handle. The insitu monitoring process for injection molding also improved the quality of Proton Waja's door handle.