Gazelle: A Human Powered Vehicle

The human powered vehicle market is not only a larger market per unit than the automotive market, but it is one in growth. The main product of this market is the classical bicycle, which is familiar around the globe, but mainly in the urban environment. The bicycle, which in this paper will be considered a human powered vehicle, is slowly gaining ground in the field of urban transportation solutions. This paper analyzes the possibility of optimizing the body of a human powered vehicle recumbent tricycle through continuous fluid dynamics. The vehicle is already designed and built, and is fully functional. The body of the vehicle comes as a necessity to give the operator protection from the elements, but the main reason is, to give the vehicle less air resistance. This would be a great benefit to the operator and the perceived comfort. Usually the aerodynamics analysis comprise of a wind tunnel test that confirms the theoretical results. This paper shows the evolution of the body of a human powered vehicle as it is optimized after identifying the turbulent areas in its shapes. After optimization, a body is obtained which will be proposed for implementing over the built vehicle.

Analysis Based Optimization of Human Powered Vehicle Body

Comfort is an important factor concerning automobiles, more so with bicycles. This remark has to be viewed with the operator’s strong connection to its own human powered vehicle, always in mind. Where an automobile might give the driver a lot of damping from the vibrations induced upon the vehicle, a bicycle has very few components between the operator and the vibration inducing elements. Therefore ample studies indicate the vibration damping effects of different shock absorbers, analyze the effect of certain types of vibrations on the human body and identify the type of vibrations that usually occur when riding a human powered vehicle. Many such studies concur that vibrations that protrude to operator through the vehicle, are very specific to a certain vehicle. In this case, when designing and developing a human powered vehicle, identifying the specific modal frequencies is imperative. Also identifying the types of frequencies induced by certain elements can help form an image about the vehicle, the vehicle properties and possibly the comfort of the operator.

Alexandru Radu Ari

Papers

Analysis Based Optimization of Human Powered Vehicle Body

Vibration Properties of Frame for Human Powered Vehicles