INTRODUCTION

Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe and as of 2003, more than 1 billion
have been produced worldwide, twice as many as the number of automobiles that have been
produced. They are the principal means of transportation in many regions. They also provide a
popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys, general fitness,
military and police applications, courier services, and bicycle racing.
A bicycle frame is the main component of a bicycle, onto which wheels and other components
are fitted. The modern and most common frame design for an upright bicycle is based on the
safety bicycle, and consists of two triangles, a main triangle and a paired rear triangle. This is
known as the diamond frame. Now that bicycle frame builders are using materials such as
aluminum, magnesium, titanium, and fiber composites, a need exists to help the designer
exploit the desirable properties of these materials. Trial and error is costly and slow, and
intuition does not always yield reliable results. A promising solution is to turn to a proven tool
of structural engineering: the finite-element analysis (FEA) method. The essence of FEA is to
break a large stress analysis problem into many smaller ones, which are then collectively
solved by computer

Figure 1: typical bicycle frame

ANSYS Mechanical is a finite element analysis tool for structural analysis, including linear,
nonlinear and dynamic studies. This computer simulation product provides finite elements to
model behavior, and supports material models and equation solvers for a wide range of

mechanical design problems. ANSYS Mechanical also includes thermal analysis and coupledphysics capabilities involving acoustics, piezoelectric, thermalstructural and thermo-electric
analysis.

OBJECTIVE
Objective of this
1) To find
PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Design and perform the bicycle frame analysis using Finite Element Method. The frames shall
be strong enough not to have plasticity, and stiff enough hence the maximum deformation is
less than 5 mm. The design is based on the vertical acceleration of 4-g. Find also the first
three mode of vibration of the bicycle frame. For this study, compare the performance of 4130
steel and 6061 T6 Al-alloy as the bike materials.

FINITE ELEMENT MODEL