Energy methods for analyzing drag and inertia in cycling kinematics

A model was developed for measuring the drag and effects of inertia for a cyclist during a race. Professional cyclist data from the Tour de France was acquired for several athletes. The data contained elevation, distance, velocity, and power as a function of time. Rolling resistance, drag, inertial energy, and potential energy were then evaluated. An integral energy equation relating these terms to input power was developed. This is much more stable numerically than differential equations in the power and force equations. This formula gave excellent agreement with the theoretical assumption that inertial effects are negligible. Additionally, the measured drag agreed with wind tunnel results. This work is the first to extract drag data from a cyclist during actual race conditions. In the future, this evaluation of drag variation coupled with energy equations could lead to optimizing cycling strategy.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Steinhardt, Emma Marie

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Anette Hosoi.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/105669

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/105669