This is Urbike.

    Hello everyone! This is my last Action Project for my Design and Engineering class. In this unit, we’ve been going over more complex machines like a wheel and axle and pulleys. We then applied them to things like gears and energy. We even visited places like Dyson. For our Dyson trip, we even designed a holiday-themed challenge card and presented them, which I’m proud of. We also visited a bike shop that sent bikes all across the world, Working Bikes. While there, I learnt two things: a lot of bike archetypes existed and finding the right bike will probably take a while. I also got to interview my brother who also biked. One thing he said that stuck with me was how he started to bike. He wanted to start biking because he saw a single gear bike, a bike that could also ride backwards. This shows me how the need for biking is a universal thing and something a lot of people want in a lot of places.

     This all culminates in our AP, which is to design a bike for someone in desperate need of one. The purpose of this is to take what we’ve been learning and use it in a context that’s familiar to us. This is my bike, so enjoy!

    For some context, my user is a resident of Australia. They wish to bike, but the main problems they face are hilly roads, bits and pieces of sharp objects, unsafe biking roads and nowhere to put their bike. This is the design I came up with to help alleviate their needs.

    My new bike isn’t just a bike; it’s an initiative for making biking better for all, one bike at a time. The Urbike Initiative is a movement to make biking safe and comfortable for people. The bike itself works to solve the issues of flats and hilly areas. It has gear shifts, so you won’t need to pedal as hard. The tires it has are tubeless and firm, stopping any stray glass shards from stopping you. There's also a detachable motor users can hook up to turn this into an e-assist bike. Also a part of all of this is the installation of curbs and better bike lanes and docks from your bike. The docks will be accessible by a keycard given to you once you purchase a bike. One of the big reasons you would buy this bike is because of how versatile it could be. While it is made for more urban areas, I imagine its capabilities could be expanded to areas like mountainous regions. Funding for the bigger ideas (docks and curbs) will come from the purchases made. 

My model bike, AR, 2022

3D model of bike, AR, 2022

    One thing that inspired my design was my brother's quote. I realized how important biking was, which was what played into wanting to make this more of an initiative. Everyone should have the chance and ability to bike freely. 

    While I can't go over all gear ratios, I can go over the largest and smallest. The smallest gear ratio will be 46:18, making a 2.55:1 ratio. The largest ratio will be 72:18, making a 4:1 ratio. I chose the smallest gear ratio because it was the best for climbing more hilly terrain. I chose the largest ratio because I felt it would give the user a nice riding experience without much work.

    For the more technical talk, my person would lives about 1.1 miles from school, making their commute about 8 minutes. Converting this to miles per hour, I cross multiplied 1.1/8 with x/60. I then got 66=8x, which I then divided by 8 to get 8.25 mph. To convert to meters per second, I first divided 8.25 by 60 to get 0.1375, which I divided by 60 again to get 0.002. I finally multiplied 0.002 by 1609 to get 3.68 m/s. 

    For the imagined full-scaled model of the bike, I decided that the diameter would be 26.5 inches, meaning the radius would be 13.25. The model bike's diameter is around 3 in. Getting the scale is as simple as dividing the full-scale's diameter by the model's, which would get us a 8.83 repeating scale. To get the full-scale bike's circumference, I multiplied the diameter by 3.14 to get 83.2 in. To get the rotations required to travel from home to school, I first converted 1.1 miles to inches, would be 69,696 in. I then divided that by 83.2 in to get roughly 838 rotations needed. 

    For the momentum and kinetic energy, I calculated that the mass of the bike and person riding it together would be around 55kg. The velocity I used was 3.68 m/s from earlier. To get the kinetic energy, you would need to do 0.5*mass*velocity^2. If I do 0.5*55*3.68^2, I would get 372.42 Joules of energy. If I wanted momentum, I would just need to multiply 3.68*55 to get 202.4 kg m/s of energy. 

    We also got to do a graphed stretch of the bike in a program called Geogebra. This is the sketch I did:

My Geogebra sktech + circle equations, AR, 2022

 

Two of the biggest obstacles for me were finding a place to start and modeling. Finding a starting point for projects was always a bit hard for me, so I was used to it at this point. Modeling, however, became a pretty big issue. While I was able to get through it, it definitely took a lot to get there. The biggest thing was that I was using a program called Tinkercad for the first time, so it was a lot more chaotic. All that being said, however, I did learn a bit from this project. One thing was a basic understanding of modeling in a program like Tinkercad. The second was just more information on bikes, as I do like riding them but don’t know much about them. The third was how to get more into the mind space of designing for others.