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ENGINEERING MECHANICS PROJECT REPORT

TOPIC - HOW
BALANCES ITSELF

DOES

BICYCLE

AUTO

In our project we have tried to find out the


reason behind the auto balancing nature of
bicycle. After the research of the 19 th century
accepted views on this phenomena are the carter
effect, Gyroscopic Effect and self-stabilization due
to the arrangement of parts in such a manner.
Thus we continue our study on the above facts
and check how does these phenomena helps
bicycle to balance itself.
Thus we started with Gyroscopic Effect, so what
actually happens in bicycle is that front wheel
acts like a gyroscope and when bicycle lean to
the right, the gyroscope applies the torque, which
turns the handlebars to the right and causes the
steering to move in the direction of the lean
bringing the wheels back under the bicycle and
holding it up same happens when bicycle leans to
the left and thus bicycle can hold itself up.
Now lets talk about the caster effect, it is
actually a self-aligning effect to keep the steering
straight and also due to this effect the steering of
the bicycle follows the lean of the bicycle to keep
it up. This is because the wheel's ground contact
point is behind the steering point and thus wheel
trails behind (The front wheel of the bicycle also

touches the ground a little [behind] where the


steering axis hits the ground) If the bicycle
direction changes when it's going forward, the
wheel will tend to follow and bring itself back
under the rider.
Now what happens if we try to counter these
effects in bicycle, like if we construct a bicycle
which has counter rotating wheels and thus net
angular momentum of gyroscopic wheel is zero
and thus gyroscopic effect is absent in the
bicycle but still the bicycle can balance itself and
now the question arises is it due to the carter
effect, thus we tried to see whether it is true or
not and later we found that a bicycle was
constructed which had a negative trail and thus
against the carter effect but was able to balance
itself even in the absence of the carter effect.
At last we will conclude to the point that the
bicycle can balance itself in the absence of the
carter effect or the gyroscopic effect but such
bicycle cannot be used for riding and thus for the
balance of the normal bicycle carter effect and
gyroscopic effect play a crucial role and help
bicycle balance itself even without a rider.
BY
Archit Sharma (B14EE007)
Daval Pargal (B14CS014)

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