Human Powered Vehicle Design Team: Speed Variable Steering Stabilizer

The Human Powered Vehicle Competition (HPVC) is held annually by ASME at a few locations. The University of Akron has competed in the ASME-East and ASME-West competitions over the past handful of years against universities from all over the world. Objectives of each team for the competition are three-fold: vehicle design, racing performance, and innovation. Our senior design project involved working on the innovation concept for ASME-East 2018 held at Penn State University during the weekend of 4/13. Speed variable steering was decided upon by the entire HPVC team early in the design process as the innovation choice for this year’s bike. It involves a mechanism that dampens the steering automatically and gradually as bike velocity increases, thus making it more difficult to turn the wheels at high speeds. Benefits of this innovation include increased safety by reducing speed-wobbles, increased rider handling & stability, and decreased overall lap times. There is also an established budget for the team and, in turn, the innovation subdivision to operate within while designing and testing the product