The Gro-ier Bro
Introduction
IT'S SPIN TO WIN IN DESIGN AND ENGINEERING! In this unit of D&E, we've been learning all and only about bikes to the point where I know exactly how to draw one from the top of my head. From learning the physics of motion on a bike to dissecting the entire anatomy of many bikes, we were challenged to design a bike for a persona that were practically randomly given. With hands on experience from our FEs with a bike shop owner and one of the marketers of the Lyft bikes here in Chicago, we were prepared to design something fitting for our target. Enjoy the revolutionary introduction of the strangest bike ever, the Gro-bro.
THE GRO-BRO
I won't lie, this action project is quite the visual feast to lay your hands on. We've designed practically three prototypes of our same bike for you to take a look at and enjoy in its either quite technologically-focused or bare-minimum design. Before we get into looking at the design though, let me introduce our wonderful persona from Sydney, Australia: Clover. Clover's an interesting case, as after we evaluated her situation we had a handful of issues to deal with in one bike design.
Firstly, Sydney is quite an elevated place, which means a lot of uphill action for our poor 11 year old friend to deal with. Secondly, tires are quite susceptible to flats when the ground is littered with a biker's nightmare. Third issue would be dangerous drivers on the road that aren't gonna be too focused on looking for a school girl just trying to get home. Lastly, nobody wants their bike stolen and nor does Clover. Except since Clover is an 11 year old who's likely to forget things, she doesn't want a good ol' trusty lock for her bike because she'll probably lose the key.
Quite a long, long, long list of issues on hand! Yet our design team refuses to remain stumped for long, so after weeks of working on our bike we've come up with our masterpiece of a design specifically for our Australian friend with help from outside experience as well! After interviewing my mother on the joys and pains of biking, one actually resonated with our persona. This resonation came from her struggle from a bike which had possibly the worst gear shift that existed, having made her uphill battles just that much harder. Below you'll see our thought process on the bike, the designs itself, and lastly our mathematics for this wonderous masterpiece.
With our persona being an 11 year old girl, we can't have her lugging around a beefy bike to school every day. To combat this challenge, we decided to look into lightweight material in order to make sure this wasn't a struggle to store inside the house and school building.
With carbon fiber and tubeless tires, we saw that our bike's weight significantly dropped to a much more manageable weight in comparison to other bikes. Carbon fiber is a strong and durable material that has been seen with more and more use due to its lightweight and durable properties in many of our everyday products, so why not bikes? Tubeless tires are a little unheard of in our day and age, but they're quite spectacular from our run-of-the-mill beefy tires. They're incredible for resisting puncture (about 90% less likely to be punctured and have a flat), while still holding up to the same standards that our regular tires do. This was to make sure that Clover didn't have to get a triple-layered set of tires to combat those pesky glass shards on the sidewalk and street.
Now as for visibility, you may already see a few things that stick out quite intentionally. On the tubeless tires, we didn't really feel a need for something revolutionary in visibility due to the fact that what's already out there works quite well. On the tires, we've decided to put reflectors on both of them for drivers and pedestrians to spot. Not only are these reflectors on the tires, but also on the back and front of the bike for full visibility from any angle. Secondly, the flag of the united states on the back wheel. This more than likely has created multiple questions upon viewing it on our design, such as: "Why is it on a bike meant for an Australian?" or "Do the rainbows and stars come with the flag?"
To answer both those questions: we thought it was a funny idea, also technically pretty practical. Nothing's gonna catch somebody's eye more than a national flag that isn't even theirs. Of course this is just meant as a gag, since the flag can be switched out for something much more sensible. But either way, the old flag on a bike easily makes somebody more visible on a street when they've got something waving high above their heads for people in bigger vehicles to see.
Now to get into the most revolutionary part of our design: the compressible bike frame. That's right. This bike can compress on itself in order to shrink its size for easier storage. The two highlighted parts in the middle of the bike are meant to be the parts that can be pushed down and locked in place until the bike user is ready to head out on the road again. This would be incorporated inside the bike frame with a design similar to how a lock works, with the release button being put specifically on the bike handle for easy use.
As for combatting uphill battles? We just made sure that our gear ratio fit that of a mountain bike. Mountain bikes are expertly designed to deal with uphill resistance, so we made sure to make the ratio on our bike 34:32 teeth (which is standard for mountain bikes).
Lastly is the basket and bell. It's fun and practical, no harm in a little bit of ring-a-ding-ding.
Alternative bike designs and mathematics
Now that you really know the deep dive on our bike's anatomy, it's time to get into both the mathematics and alternative designs. We have a 3D model designed by me, and a more math-heavy simplistic design created by my partner on a website called Geogebra. We'll start with the fun 3D side first, then close up with the mathematics.
Hopefully that was fun to poke around in, because it did take quite some time to put together from the ground up. We used this 3D model to decide the scale of our design, primarily using the diameter of the wheels from the 3D design in comparison to our own.
CONCLUSION
This was quite a lot of work on just one single action project. I honestly loved it surprisingly, despite the complications and hours of time poured into this, I have even grown attached to this weird bike. The mathematics felt overwhelming to look at on the rubric, but was easier to do than one would think. Overall, it was quite the experience that I feel proud of ending this unit on. Without any more further cheesy heart-felt writing, I believe that is all for this project. I sincerely hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading this massive amount of writing.
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