Development of intelligent magneto-rheological dampers for mountain bikes

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The shock absorbers currently utilized in mountain bikes have to be manually adjusted by the biker before each ride. This feature is at times inconvenient and unsafe when biking in rough and unpredictable terrains. Hence, there is a great interest among high-end bicycle manufacturers to develop suspension systems that can be electronically controlled by the rider under various downhill or uphill ride conditions. Such a feature would enable the rider to conveniently change the damping characteristics in real-time, based on the terrain profile, with the push of a button. Motivated by the above need in the all-mountain and cross-country bicycles, the proposed collaborative R&D activity will focus on developing a mechatronic damper for uptake in the high-end bike industry. The damper mechanism is envisaged to have a great potential for commercialization due to enhancing the performance of the bike suspension system and its real-time tunability by the user. To achieve this goal, we will investigate the utilization of magneto-rheological fluids integrated with mechanical designs, power electronics drive circuitry, and sensing mechanisms to develop a prototype damper device. Magneto-rheological (MR) fluids can change their viscosity when a magnetic field is applied to the device, allowing real-time tuning of damping characteristics. Although MR fluid dampers have been used in semi-active suspension systems in the automotive industry, its application to mountain bikes is challenging due to the issues related to energy consumption, weight, response time, and size of the device. These challenges will be investigated in the proposed activity. The proposed collaborative effort will be conducted between Rocky Mountain Bicycles (RMB), Inc., of North-Vancouver, BC, and the Motion and Power Electronic Control Lab at Simon Fraser University to investigate and develop such a device. The proposed project follows a first phase of a successful collaborative work with RMB on the feasibility of utilizing MR fluid dampers for semi-active suspension in mountain bikes.