Event

SAFER Seminar: On the Art and Science of Bicycling with a perspective on Safety Issues

When: November 18, 15:00-16:00.
Where: SAFER, Lindholmspiren 3, Lindholmen Science Park, Gothenburg. Room “Aldman”. Please ask the reception in the ground floor to let you in.

Arend L. Schwab,  Delft University of Technology:
I have a bicycle dynamics lab. I teach mechanics, advanced dynamics and applied math classes. I am interested in classical rigid-body dynamics with contacts (collisions, friction, non-holonomic constraints). I work in flexible multibody dynamics, bicycle dynamics and control, speed skating, and various other sports engineering applications. I have also worked in robotics and legged locomotion. I usually prefer simple models. My degrees are from Engineering at Dordrecht and Delft (BSc. 1979, MSc. 1984, PhD. 2002). The work on bicycle dynamics started during my sabbatical (2002/2003) at Cornell University with Andy Ruina.

Abstract:
Riding a bicycle is an acquired skill. At rest the system is highly unstable yet, given some forward speed, it is easy to stabilize. Over the past 140 years scores of people have been attracted to this subject, either for a dissertation, a hobby or sometimes as part of a life’s work. Unfortunately, few results agree and there is little generality on the basic features that make a bicycle stable and why some bicycle are easier to control then others. In this talk I will focus on the dynamics and control of the bicycle and the relation to some safety issues.

Welcome!