Pedal Summer 2014 Aerovelo

Aero AeroVelo REPOUR copy edit REPOUR copy edit Tom Amick/Aerovelo by Lisa Evans Aerovelo (below) Illustrations o...

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Aero

AeroVelo

REPOUR copy edit

REPOUR copy edit

Tom Amick/Aerovelo

by Lisa Evans

Aerovelo

(below) Illustrations of Aerovelo’s new Eta, the most aerodynamic human-powered bicycle ever built, which will attempt to break the land-speed record for a human-powered vehicle this fall.

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n June 2013, Toronto, Ont. engineer Todd Reichert pedaled a gigantic four-rotor human-powered helicopter called The Atlas to a height of 3.3 metres for 64 seconds, breaking into the record books. Reichert won the AHS Sikorsky Prize for the first humanpowered helicopter to reach a hovering height of more than three metres, a $250,000 award that had previously gone unclaimed for 33 years. Now, Reichert and his AeroVelo co-founder, Cameron Robertson, are seeking to make a second mark in the record books – this time for designing and building the world’s fastest bicycle. The AeroVelo duo will be attempting to break the land-speed record for a human-powered vehicle, which currently stands at 133.9 kph (or 83.8 mph). That record was set by a Dutch team last fall. Before that, Sam Whittingham of Quadra Island, B.C. held the record for nearly 14 years. Now, the Toronto duo is hoping to bring the prize back to Canada at this year’s challenge in September. But beyond breaking a speed record, Reichert and Robertson are seeking to prove that human-powered transportation is not only incredibly cool, but efficient as well. Their latest design is called the Eta, a name based on the Greek letter that represents efficiency. “We wanted to have this bike symbolize the ultimate pursuit of efficiency and aerodynamic perfection,” says Robertson. Success in building the world’s fastest bike powered by nothing but human effort was the culmination of years of hard work. Since 2006, Reichert and Robertson have been enthralled with human-powered projects. As engineering students at the University of Toronto, they attempted to build a human-powered plane that could fly like a bird flapping its wings. Their ornithopter, called the Snowbird, was pedaled

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(above) Aerovelo’s Bluenose at Battle Mountain, Nevada, last year reached a speed of 125 kilometres per hour.

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by Reichert into the air above a Toronto field in September 2010, winning the Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition. Since 2010, they’ve focused their attention on speedbikes. Working with the University of Toronto’s Human-Powered Vehicle Design Team, AeroVelo recruits engineering students during the summer months to provide supplemental hands-on education to the normal engineering curriculum. The teams work for four intense months, designing and building human-powered bikes. “Those bikes are always built for the ASME [American Society of Mechanical Engineers] Human-Powered Vehicle Competition in the U.S., and therefore not purely designed for speed,” says Robertson. The challenge of beating the world speed record for a human-powered vehicle was one that was simply too enticing to pass up. Eta will be the first bike the team has built that is truly optimized for speed. It’s projected to break 145 kpr. “Last year, we were able to reach 125 on a research vehicle [the Bluenose], so we have a lot of good validation on our aerodynamic design. [So], 145 is a number that we’re pretty comfortable with,” says Robertson. The aerodynamic design of the Eta will be key to achieving these high speeds. The rider sits in a recumbent position inside the slick bullet-shaped exterior shell – which looks more like a high-speed train than a bike – and steers the bike through a camera-vision system rather than looking through a windshield. Using computer models, the AeroVelo team designed the Eta’s exterior shell to reduce aerodynamic drag to more than 100 times less than that of the most streamlined cars. “Cars and humans on bicycles are pretty similar in that the aerodynamics are awful,” says Robertson. Summer 2014 PEDAL

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Aerovelo

Aerovelo’s Todd Reichert (l) and Cameron Robertson are seeking to make a second mark in the record books for speed.

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“When you’re a person on a bike or a car going through the air, all of the flow is separated behind you.” This creates a drag that reduces the speed of the vehicle. By optimizing the aerodynamics of the outer shell, almost every bit of power produced by the bike’s pilot makes it to the road. In addition to the bike’s advanced aerodynamic shape, every other detail, from the rubber compound of the tires to the aerodynamics of the spokes to the efficiency of the chain, has been analyzed to reduce resistance and improve efficiency. The team recently concluded a successful Kickstarter campaign, raising more than $30,000 to support the project. The funds represented a quarter of the total cost of the project (the rest of the money came from sponsorships and donations). “[The Kickstarter campaign] was also a really great opportunity to raise awareness about our project,” says Robertson. For the 30 days of the live campaign, the AeroVelo team enhanced its social media coverage of the project and garnered a great deal of attention from both those in the field of engineering and cycling. In addition to being an engineering feat, Robertson hopes that the speedbike project will raise interest in sustainable travel and in cycling in particular. “A vehicle like this is very efficient for long-distance travel and it’s also very useful for inside the city,” he says. In September, the AeroVelo team will unveil the Eta at the ASME Human-Powered Vehicle Challenge in Battle Mountain, Nev. Three test riders have been training to pilot the Eta – two students, Calvin Moes and Trefor Evans, as well as Reichert, who piloted the helicopter last year and is expected to ride the Eta in its record-breaking attempt. Reichert is a speedskater who has very powerful legs. The test riders have been undergoing a regimen of strength training and doing normal upright-bike rides for cardio exercise. They’ve also been training on AeroVelo’s custom-built training rig that replicates the exact geometry of the Eta. “[This] is critical for developing the right muscles for maximum power output,” says Robertson. Although there is no current plan to commercialize AeroVelo’s speedbike designs, Robertson says he has heard that other companies in the Netherlands and France are pursuing the commercialization of these vehicles. “Part of the advantage of designing anything for human power is that the human engine is really only a third of a horsepower in equivalent power, so if you can design a vehicle that is efficient enough to go at highway speed on just a human’s third of a horsepower, then it’s pretty trivial to integrate an electric motor with that, and then you have what could really be a viable car-replacement technology,” says Robertson. Perhaps not too far in the distant future, we could see bullet-shaped bikes moving down the road at highway speeds. www.pedalmag.com

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