engineeringatUI

I am an engineering student at the university of Iowa, and I am doing a project on material properties. I have a friend out of Ohio that owns his own bike company and he is in the process of designing a bamboo bicycle. I am doing my project on the material properties of bamboo in order to give him specifications to construct a stronger and more efficient frame.

Now, I am in the process of finding all the forces and stresses put on a bike frame (bumps, peddling, etc) so I can perform the analisys of the material properties and select to optimal diameters and make the frame strong and effiecient.

Dose anyone have any links? I can make the frame in solidworks and run force analisis but, I need to know all the applied forces on the biek, and that is what I am researching now.

Thanks,

Ryan K

P.S. if anyone is doing anything like this private message me, I would love to come into contact with some people with simmilar goals

curbtender

https://www.calfeedesign.com/bamboo.htm

engineeringatUI

Calfee makes a beautiful bamboo bike. Im hopeing to use FEA (finite element analysis) to construct the most effiecient frame possible and in order to do that I need to find all the stresses regularly put on a road frame I was just wondering if anyone had links to sites that discussed such topics. I will be doing a static force analysis on the frame in order to determine the optimal sizes of the tubing necisary to build the lightest safest frame with optimal flexing properties.

unterhausen

there is probably more literature about this than you would expect. I just googled for bicycle stress analysis and the second link looked like a thesis. If they did a halfway decent literature review, you will have more literature than you can handle. Also, you can search for papers that cite the papers you find. These will be found on the number of sites, citeseer as just one example.

Road Fan

Having FEA is great for finding the stresses for a specific design. If you want the best design, the "most efficient frame possible" you do indeed need all the stresses. More than that you need to know how to FIND the best design. That can be a sudden flash of insight or a lifetime of trying and testing, or both. Great design engineers start with designing SOMETHING and evaluate their results and process. It's not just being able to analyze.

Plus, what about beauty? Aerodynamics? Customer appeal? Do people really LIKE bamboo as a frame material? Take Calfee for example, how much demand does he have for bamboo? Can it be assembled efficiently, and hence be a cost-effective design? What about dynamic stress? peak pedaling forces? absorption of road shock? These aren't static problems.

Enough engineer talk.

Scooper

You might want to get a copy of ASTM F2711-08, Standard Test Methods for Bicycle Frames.

https://www.astm.org/Standards/F2711.htm

NoReg

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/

https://www.bikethink.com/Frameflex.htm

I just searched "bicycle frame fea" More than you could ever make sense of.

Allen

Calfee has sold about 200 bamboo bikes in 10 years. Demand is so-so.
They are easy to build, search this forum for the word bamboo and you will find a thread where I and ChiapasFixed independently built our bamboo frames.

A bamboo frame is glass like smooth, wood has excellent vibration dampening qualities.

All the fiber in bamboo runs parallel. This is a problem and why my first frame split. To make frames for public consumption the largest hurtle is finding a way to prevent the pipes from splitting when under lateral stresses. I believe Calfee toughens his bamboo chemically. I had thought of using a balloon bladder and some carbon cloth to line the inside of the tubes, but I gave up on the idea.

For personal use a bamboo bike is strong enough, but I would not sell one where the fibers have not been tied together in some fashion, the likelihood of it splitting is too great.

engineeringatUI

Exactly More than I could ever make sense of, I got some good resources already, I was hopeing for some simpler text but, due to the nature of this project I no longer belive simpler text is possible.

In regard to that, I have left out a few important details. I am doing project primarily for educational pourposes and secondarily to help out a buddy (i figured if i was going to spend over 100 hours on a project it may as well serve some pourpose) I am serving as a consultant to my friend who is designing the bamboo bicycle, So I am taking his design parameters (exact frame specs) and selecting the tubeing necesary baised off of my material property test results and a generous factor of saftey to make up for the material variance. I don't have the time or resources to completly design this frame so issues such as Aerodynamics, Customer appeal, Jointing, cost-efficeny etc.. will be left up to my friend with the company.

Thanks for all the insight everyone, this is exactly the kind of input I was looking for in terms of treating the bamboo for splitting I am still searching for exactly how to get that done.

engineeringatUI

Coming from calfee's website, The bamboo has been smoked and heat treated to prevent spliting and the frame is coated with a satin polyurethane to seal it up. Dose anyone think that their is more involed than just that (not looking for anyones trade secrets but, wondering if anyone thaught their was more to it than just that) I am still in the preliminary stages of this project and am still unshure how I will be treating the bamboo to alter its material properties

Erzulis Boat 

Wood stabilization with polymers. The process is done under pressure, certain woods are difficult if not virtually impossible, but many woods respond extremely well to the saturation.

Might be something to investigate.

radiocontrolhea

You'll need to take a vector statics course. I'm not exactly sure if community colleges offer it.

unterhausen

the OP is an engineering student at the University of Iowa, so I suspect he's taken a vector statics course or the equivalent.

NoReg

"Wood stabilization with polymers. The process is done under pressure, certain woods are difficult if not virtually impossible, but many woods respond extremely well to the saturation."

Orvis rods were phenolic impregnated under Wes Jordan's patent for rod reasons, rods don't split, the culms almost always do when treated normally. So bamboo can be impregnated as you suggest.

zonatandem

Craig Calfee also builds a 'boo tandem.
Have ridden one of his 'boo singles . . . rides/handles as nice as one of his c/f bikes.

Allen

Yes, there is a chemical teatment involved as well.

Erik B

To the OP please, please, please consider some remedial english courses or implement a spell checker. Your words are painful to read at best.

I'm aware that as an engineering student you probably feel that being able to spell correctly is over-rated but believe me it's not and it could help you in the future.

purevl

Out of curiosity, what exactly is your major and what classes have you taken? While radiocontrolhea's response did come off as a bit snarky I was thinking something similar myself. Are you a civil engineer instead of mechanical, or maybe mechanical without physics? I only ask because while programs like Solidworks are very useful tools, if you can't understand the papers you are reading concerning other similar work perhaps your foundation in materials science isn't strong enough. If your goal is just to do something interesting for a project assignment that's understandable. However, if you really want to do fresh and important work in the field you might want to consider brushing up on some of the basics before you "cheat" by jumping straight to software. Statics barely scratches the surface of what you need to understand to do real analytical research, the other option being to just build-test-destroy, which is a perfectly acceptable, if expensive, option. Lastly, if theory really isn't your thing, the easiest way to get hard data (without "borrowing" it) would probably be to throw some rosettes on that puppy and ride it.


That's a gross generalization, an insulting stereotype, and just generally an a**hole thing to say. For what it's worth I'm an engineering physics student with better spelling, grammar, and vocabulary than most language majors. [READ: In the 99th percentile, nationally] So not only are many of us "able to spell correctly" we can do vector calculus much better than the average bear. The image of the snorting lab dork in front of a basement chalkboard is a bit outmoded, to work in the engineering industry today you are expected to be well rounded. Perhaps the OP's spelling issues were rooted in something as simple as typographical errors or maybe, like me, his hands are too large to comfortably fit an average keyboard. Why be hateful?

Nessism

I’ve got some FMEA analysis performed by an engineering student a few years ago. Provide an email address and I’ll forward it your way.

engineeringatUI

To everyone who provided me with some insight or constructive criticism, Thanks.

To everyone who felt it necessary to talk some smack, you would be correct in pointing out that my spelling and grammar is about as far from good as you can get. I am horrible at English, to give you a general idea, I will provide you with my act score, I got a 17 on the English, a 34 on the math and, a 32 on the science. I would like you to consider a couple things; first of all you are on a forum talking smack, what does that make you? Smart? Second and probably more important is why are you talking smack? What purpose dose it serve? Does it make you feel better about yourself? If I was a weak-minded individual I could let it get to me and give up on this project. I am working toward becoming a productive member of society and you are discouraging me, which doesn’t make any sense. From a simple economic standpoint the more each member of society is able to produce, the better standard of living everyone within the economy enjoys. I don’t understand non-constructive criticism it doesn’t get anyone anywhere but whatever, to each his own right? I won’t let bogus comments kill my sprit.

Erik B

Non-constructive criticism would be calling you a idiot for considering giving up on an engineering project because you can't spell. Suggesting you implement a spell checker when making requests for engineering help when you readily admit that english is your weakest subject is far from that.

The inabilty of prospective fellow engineers to effectively communicate via the written word is one of my pet peeves.

Sorry to harsh your mellow dude. Carry on.




FWIW Facts is facts. There was nothing hateful in what I typed.
I have no image of snorting lab dorks in front of a chalkboard and I had very few classmates that gave a **** about the english language. Being well rounded should include having the ability to spell and if you aren't sure perhaps running a spell checker to do it for you rather than throwing up multiple incorrect spelling variations in the hopes of getting one right.

Sturmcrow

I wonder if you couldn't simply compare the Young's Modulus and yield strength of bamboo to steel, aluminum, or CF and use that comparison to design tubes similar to a high end tubeset. Specifically, Reynolds has already spent a lot of time and money perfecting their 853 tubeset. Why not just use their tubing specifications to size your bamboo after correcting for the modulus and strength?

To Erik B; the OP's spelling was not perfect. However, this is a forum for framebuilding, not grammar improvement. If I were feeling snarky, perhaps I could point out the obnoxious runon sentence with which you ended your last post. I wouldn't typically do that, however, because as long as a person can convey a message without using "u" for "you" or similar trash then I'll read it and help out if I'm able.

unterhausen

It's usually pretty time consuming to get useful information from the literature, mainly because it is not generally assumed that the reader will be starting with an undergraduate student's limited knowledge. I like to read people's thesis, because they are not quite as limited. And a Masters level thesis is good because the criteria for originality is pretty low.

DannoXYZ 

It's actually possible to get aluminium tubing shaped like bamboo. Add realistic paint and you've got the strength of alloy with the look of bamboo.

NoReg

Not to say it isn't admirable to try to quantify this stuff, but bamboo is a natural material. There is a range of wall thickness and quality in the average bundle. If you used only half of the best of it, you would probably be around an industry average for rods. Rods are highly stressed, and you can't make a good one without Tonkin cane of good quality. But people have made bikes out of any old junk they found at the garden center and the furniture mart. So I don't think they are all using high end stuff. Or grading the good stuff that hard if they are. All that really leaves is the tube size, which is easy to scale from existing bike pictures. Not a complex project.