Seminar on the art and science of bicyling

Venue: Room “A222”@DII, Via Sommarive, 5 Time: 11:00 am-12:30 am

• Arend L. Schwab, Biomechanical Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering Delft University of Technology - The Netherlands

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 after which I will address some interesting and open issues in bicycling science.

Short bioghaphy: 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, biomechanics, bicycle dynamics and control, sports engineering, and speed skating. 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.

Organized in collaboration with CeRiSM within the scientific collaboration agreement with the Department of Industrial Engineering.