The relative contribution of road bicycle components on vibration induced to the cyclist

Abstract

Improving comfort in road bicycle design is a paramount concern for cyclists, who are affected by the vibrations caused by constant contact with the road surface. The cycling community has deployed many efforts in the attempt to understand and improve bicycle comfort. However, these attempts have been focused on specific components such as the fork, frame and wheels without knowing their relative influence on vibration induced to the bicyclist (VIB). The objective of this paper is to assess the relative contribution of bicycle components on the VIB at the cyclist's hands and buttocks. A factorial design test comparing the VIB in acceleration, force and power of different bicycle components has already shown that the handlebar and fork are the preponderant components for the VIB measured at the cyclist's hands. At the buttocks, the preponderant components are the wheels and frame.

Contribution of Bamboo for Vibratory Comfort in Biomechanics of Cycling

“…This could be explained through the preponderance of the absorption by the fork. The fact is confirmed by a study [21], where it was shown that the fork and the frame were highly pertinent elements in the transmission of vibrations. The transmissibility functions resonanced frequencies range were 30-50Hz for the wrist, 16-30 Hz for the forearm, 20-90Hz for the eyeball and 10-12Hz for spine [32].…”

“…One of the dominant factors in vibration transfer is the frame and this research is based on the frame study . Indeed [21], it has been studied by factor analysis that the influence of the components on vibration transfer in the hand-arm system is favored by the fork and tires while the whole body vibration is mainly due to the wheels and frame. Thus the frame can be studied (i) according to its geometry [22,23], or (ii) the material [24 -27].…”

On the Exposure of Hands to Vibration in Road Cycling: An Assessment of the Effect of Gloves and Handlebar Tape

“…Because of its high vertical compliance, the elastic rope did not affect the measurements. Measurements of vertical force and vertical acceleration transmitted to the different systems, i.e., the cyclist or the cyclist + gloves/bar tape, were taken using instrumented brake hoods presented by Lépine et al [11] (Figure 1-item 1). The force and acceleration signals were collected using a LMS SCADAS 24-bit acquisition system (model SCR01-08B) at a sampling frequency of 8192 Hz.…”

“…Several studies related to the transmission of vibration by a road bicycle and road bicycle dynamic comfort have been reported in the literature. Test protocols and test rigs that mimic the road excitation in a laboratory were developed [4][5][6][7], and a wide range of transducers have been embedded within the bicycle in areas such as the brake hoods, stem, handlebars and seatpost to measure transmitted acceleration, force, power and energy to the cyclist [8][9][10][11]. The assessment of the bicycle and bicycle components' vibration transmissibility has been carried out [4,6,11], while psychophysics approaches have been used to assess cyclists' vibration perceptual thresholds, suggesting that there is a large variability among cyclists in their capacity to differentiate sensory inputs at the hands [12,13].…”

“…The present study aims to quantify the effectiveness of cycling gloves and handlebar tape in reducing the vibration transmitted to the cyclist. The reduction of transmitted vibration was measured in terms of transmitted power and transmitted energy at the cyclist's hands since these two mechanical quantities are emerging as preferred metrics for bicycle dynamic comfort assessment [5,7,[10][11][12][13]. A shock-type excitation (i.e., impacts) was used in this study since it was thought to have a more severe negative effect on the cyclist than that of random-type excitation (i.e., excitation related to road surface roughness).…”