• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.1-5
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• 2016

A bicycle is one of the most popular sporting goods in view of a sport activity and a human health. Metallic materials such as steel, aluminum, etc. were mainly used to the bicycle fork in the past. Nowadays, the carbon fiber reinforced composite materials are widely used to the manufacturing of a bicycle fork to reduce the weight and to increase the efficiency. Safety is a most important design parameter of a bicycle fork even if the weight and cost reduction are important. Bicycle failure may happen at the critical spot of a bicycle fork and cause the accident. In this paper, the composite bicycle fork will be analyzed to secure the safety and detect a critical spot by using the finite element method with Tsai-Wu failure criterion. The stress data were obtained for the laminated composites with various number of plies and fiber orientation under the bending load. Thus, design concept of a bicycle fork was proposed to secure the safety of a bicycle. The finite element analysis results show that the connection area between a steer tube and a fork blade is critical spot, and 75 or more layers of 0 degree are needed to secure the safety of a bicycle fork.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.643-646
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• 2009

This study was conducted to simulate the influence of vibration associated with cycling on the body. In this simulation the human model that the riding on a bicycle which have suspension and non-suspension front forks was used. And to arouse impact two kind of bump, 50mm height of radical raised spot and 150mm height of slow raised spot, were used. The vertical displacement of head, the vertical acceleration of head and the torque of neck joint were analysed. The results say that the function of shock absorbing was grater when passing though a 50mm height of radical raised spot then a 150mm height of slow raised spot.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.7
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• pp.943-946
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• 2010

In this study, a front suspension system, which is mounted on the handle itself, was suggested because of its light weight and cost efficiency. The shock absorption was evaluated for the three types of suspension models; non-suspension, suspension on front forks (existing model), and suspension on handle (suggested model). The human body model was used for performing impact simulation for comparing the shock absorption for the suspension models. The result of the simulation shows that shock absorption for the proposed suspension model was not as good as that for the front fork suspension model. Nevertheless, the shock absorption observed for the proposed suspension model was significant when compared to the non-suspension model. Consequently, the proposed suspension model could be applied to lightweight bicycles.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.7-13
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• 2019

The objective of this study was to present a damped pneumatic suspension, a bike fork suspension, which can adapt itself to incoming road excitations is presented in this paper. It consists of a hydraulic damper and a pneumatic spring in parallel with a linear spring. The study also proposed a variable and switchable orifice, in the hydraulic damper, to select appropriate damping property. Hydraulic-pneumatic circuit model for the bike fork suspension was established based on AMESim, in order to predict its performance. In addition, elastic-damping characteristics of the fork such as spring constant and viscous damping coefficient were computed and compared, for validation, with those evaluated by experiment using the universal test machine. Through simulation analysis and test, it was established that the hydraulic-pneumatic circuit model is effective and practical for development of future MTB suspensions.