Development of intelligent magneto-rheological dampers for mountain bikes

目前山地自行车使用的减震器必须由骑自行车的人在每次骑行前手动调整。当在崎岖和不可预测的地形中骑车时，这一功能有时会不方便和不安全。因此，高端自行车制造商对开发可由骑车人在各种下坡或上坡条件下进行电子控制的悬挂系统非常感兴趣。这样的功能将使骑手能够方便地根据地形轮廓，通过按下按钮来实时改变减振特性。 在全山地和越野自行车上述需求的推动下，拟议的合作研发活动将专注于开发一种机电一体化减振器，以供高端自行车行业使用。由于提高了自行车悬挂系统的性能及其用户的实时可调性，该减振器机构被认为具有巨大的商业化潜力。为了实现这一目标，我们将研究利用磁流变液结合机械设计、电力电子驱动电路和传感机制来开发原型阻尼器装置。当向设备施加磁场时，磁流变(MR)流体可以改变其粘度，从而允许实时调整阻尼特性。虽然磁流变液阻尼器已经应用于汽车工业的半主动悬架系统中，但由于装置的能耗、重量、响应时间和尺寸等问题，将其应用于山地自行车是具有挑战性的。这些挑战将在拟议的活动中进行调查。拟议的合作工作将由卑诗省北温哥华的落基山自行车(人民币)有限公司和西蒙·弗雷泽大学的运动和电力电子控制实验室进行，以调查和开发这样的设备。这个拟议的项目是在与人民币就山地自行车使用磁流变液阻尼器进行半主动悬挂的可行性进行成功合作的第一阶段之后进行的。

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.