Design and development of mechanism based drive bicycle

For the last few decades, efforts are being made to propose new and efficient solutions to come up with
the design of chainless drive bicycles. Though chained cycles are still commonly used, being lighter in
weight and cheaper in maintenance, however, during off-road cycling, and when torque requirements
increase, either chain gets disengaged from the sprocket or altogether break. Most of the new proposed
mechanical designs to modify or replace chains are bevel and worm gears based. However, the gear
manufacturing cost, maintenance, or replacement cost is a major hurdle in this development.
For this project, a four-bar linkage mechanism was developed. The mechanical Bicycle System is a
systems project that contains a pedal attached to a triangle-shaped conrod of a parallelogram
mechanism of three cranks. The shaft is fixed to the crank, and the shaft rotates on a bearing, so the
wheel is connected to the shaft through a wheel placed inside the rim hub. Three crank concepts help
the parallelogram mechanism overcome its dead positions.
Results show that it is possible and relatively simple, to build a mechanical bicycle by oneself. Each of
these will be built upon and improved further by future students, one category at a time. The hope is
that this design can become very efficient, cost-effective, and one day mass-produced.