ME 4140

Design Project 2: Design of a Bicycle Crank Arm

Mark Swartz
Abstract

Problem Description

A steel bicycle crank arm of the following dimensions is to be designed: 6

inches (in) in length with a 2 in pedal protrusion fixed perpendicular to the

end to make an L shape. The component will be initially designed to have a

solid circular cross section of diameter 0.5 in. The crank arm is visually

depicted in Figure 1 below. Upon analyzation the component will be

redesigned with varied dimensions and cross section.

Figure 1: SolidWorks model of the crank arm (left),

diagram depicting crank arm motion (above,
F1 = -100; %lbf (theta 0-90)
F2 = -200; %lbf (theta 90-180)
F3 = 50; %lbf (theta 180-270)
F4 = 25; %lbf (theta 270-360)
cropped from class handout), and code excerpt
(below) describing the force application.

The crank arm will be pinned and rotate about point A (as shown in Figure 1

above). A varying vertical force (detailed in Figure 1) will be applied to point

B at every point in the components rotation.

Analysis

To begin analysis

Results

Summary and Conclusion

Appendix