Modeling and analysis of a bicycle equipped with in-wheel suspensions

This paper studies the application of in-wheel suspensions and airless tires to bicycles. The paper analyzes the in-wheel suspension solution in two interwoven directions: a model-based study and an experimental analysis. On the one hand, a multi-body simulator allows for detailed dynamic and design sensitivities analyses. On the other hand, the proposed architecture is experimentally compared to a classical bicycle with pneumatic tires. The analysis, mainly focusing on the in-plane dynamics, shows that the suspension system improves comfort (road filtering) of more than 20% on all tested road surfaces (with the exception of cobblestone), but at the same time reduces the vehicle efficiency of about 14%. The loss of efficiency is due to the periodic compression and extension of the rotating suspension assembly.