An improved design of an on-road bicycle frame under fatigue testing simulations

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to improve the safety factor as well as the weight of an on-road bicycle frame. The main performance target, the minimum fatigue safety factor, in the bicycle frame during the fatigue test simulations is analyzed by using ANSYS/Workbench software. Six dimensional parameters of the bicycle frame are selected as the control factors to be improved. Because all the control factors are continuous, the uniform design of experiments method is employed to plan a set of experiments. To determine the minimum fatigue safety factor of each frame, the fatigue finite element analysis is used to simulate the behavior of each frame which undergoes three fatigue test simulations. According to the ISO 4210 standard, the minimum fatigue safety factor must be greater than 1. Therefore, the best frame of all the experiments that improves the fatigue safety factor as well as the frame mass is selected as the improved version of design. In comparison with the original design, the improved bicycle frame has a maximum improvement of fatigue safety factor of 28.76% and an improvement of mass of 1.83%. As a result, both the fatigue safety and weight are improved for an on-road bicycle frame.