Building a Speebike (World Record Attempt)

First Stop Introductions
#1

Hi everyone,

Myself and a team of engineering students from Toronto are building a bicycle to reach 145 km/h (90 MPH) on level ground, and break the World Human-Powered Speed Record.

The team has had a great deal of experience with composites including the human-powered helicopter that won the Sikorsky prize and the world’s first human-powered ornithopter. We’re always learning and developing new techniques and think this is a pretty awesome forum.

If you’re interested in our project check us out here: http://kck.st/TA2uX6

#2

Welcome to the forums!

Is this part of a school project or something independent?

#3

It’s more of an independent project being tackled by the AeroVelo team. However, we’re primarily made up of engineering students at the University of Toronto, and are currently led by two alumni.

Many of our members are also involved with the Human Powered Vehicle Design Team at the university, which builds similar streamlined bikes for several races including the ASME Human Powered Vehicle Challenge (HPVC).

#4

Awesome project! My college had a large HPV project, unfortunately I was too busy to get involved. Good luck!

Side question: It looks like you are using Solidworks for design, what are you using for the composite layup analysis/simulation?

#5

Aerovelo
Did you go to competition this year? I helped the HPV team in 2011 when I was at University of California Pomona, and happened to talk to a couple of people who went this year from UW Madison

#6

If a structure can be modelled by beam elements then we use a linear structural model. We find the stiffness properties of a beam using BECAS which is open source FEM software developed at the technical university of Denmark. The structural deflection is then determined through an in-house structural model and these deflections are then passed back to BECAS to return the stresses and strains at various points in the beam. This method lends itself very well to our structural optimizations.

For structures which cannot be modelled as beam elements, we just use Solidworks simulation tools.

#7

We work very closely with the Human-Powered Vehicles Design Team at the University of Toronto. The team goes to the ASME HPVC East every year but unfortunately we’ve never made it out to the West event. It’s always a blast :wink: