Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle

Pham, Huy; Bandaru, Aseesh Paul Paul; Bellannagari, Pranav; Zaidi, Sohail; Viswanathan, Vimal

doi:10.3390/designs6030059

Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Edit a Special Issue

Article Menu

...

This is an early access version, the complete PDF, HTML, and XML versions will be available soon.

Open AccessArticle

Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle

Huy Pham

¹,

Aseesh Paul Paul Bandaru

Pranav Bellannagari

²,

Sohail Zaidi

² and

Vimal Viswanathan

^1,*

Mechanical Engineering Department, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA

Intelliscience Institute, San Jose, CA 95192, USA

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Designs 2022, 6(3), 59; https://doi.org/10.3390/designs6030059 (registering DOI)

Received: 6 May 2022 / Revised: 12 June 2022 / Accepted: 16 June 2022 / Published: 18 June 2022

(This article belongs to the Topic Building Energy and Environment)

Download PDF Citation Export

Abstract

With the increase in demand for more sustainable energy sources, recent researchers have been looking into harvesting energy spent by humans for various purposes. One of the available sources of such energy is exercise equipment. While a few products are available in the market to harvest the power expended during an exercise session, these products are costly, and the cost may prohibit a day-to-day user from purchasing those. Motivated by this challenge, this paper describes a long-running research project that uses a static exercise bicycle to sustainably harvest human energy. A regenerative spin bike that uses the friction between a flywheel and a BaneBots wheel was designed and deployed. For the motor mount, two methods are investigated: linear preloading and rotary preloading. A commercially available indoor static bicycle is modified to incorporate the flywheel and the motor attachment. The generated electricity is converted to DC using a three-phase rectifier. A car charger is used for charging any devices attached to the setup. The resulting configuration is very effective in operating small electronic devices. This setup, which uses only off-the-shelf components, can be considered a replacement for its expensive custom-made counterparts.

Keywords: energy harvesting; green energy; green gym; sustainable energy

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Pham, H.; Bandaru, A.P.P.; Bellannagari, P.; Zaidi, S.; Viswanathan, V. Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle. Designs 2022, 6, 59. https://doi.org/10.3390/designs6030059

AMA Style

Pham H, Bandaru APP, Bellannagari P, Zaidi S, Viswanathan V. Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle. Designs. 2022; 6(3):59. https://doi.org/10.3390/designs6030059

Chicago/Turabian Style

Pham, Huy, Aseesh Paul P. Bandaru, Pranav Bellannagari, Sohail Zaidi, and Vimal Viswanathan. 2022. "Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle" Designs 6, no. 3: 59. https://doi.org/10.3390/designs6030059

Find Other Styles

Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Article metric data becomes available approximately 24 hours after publication online.

Abstract views Pdf views Html views

Article Menu

Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle

Abstract

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Map by Country/Region

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI