Fatigue simulation with pedalling load and vertical load for city bike frame following British standard EN 14764

Abstract

The frame supports both the load from the rider and the riding conditions. When the loading conditions occur repeatedly, the bicycle frame will experience fatigue failure. This study discusses the fatigue simulation for city bike frames made of titanium, intending to know the safety factor and the service life of the bicycle frame according to a pedal load and a vertical load following British Standard BS EN 14764. The bicycle frame used for this research is a frame for the city bike type, where each composing tube of the bicycle frame has a thickness of 1.2 mm. The pedalling load applied to each pedal is repeated downward with 1000 N. While the dynamic load vertically downwards with a force magnitude from 0 to +1000 N. The results of the fatigue test simulation with each type of loading indicate that the titanium material with 1.2 mm thickness is overdesigned. Therefore, it is necessary to modify the bicycle frame by reducing the thickness of the frame to 1 mm on each tube. The safety value of the resulting fatigue simulation shows a decrease due to the reduction in thickness, however it still safe in terms of the material strength limit. The resulting bicycle frame after modified is lighter, where the initial mass was 6.79 kg and reduce to 3.92 kg.