Publication Date
6-1-2022
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Designs
Volume
6
Issue
3
DOI
10.3390/designs6030059
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-theshelf components, can be considered a replacement for its expensive custom-made counterparts.
Keywords
energy harvesting, green energy, green gym, sustainable energy
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Department
Mechanical Engineering
Recommended Citation
Huy Pham, Aseesh Paul Bandaru, Pranav Bellannagari, Sohail Zaidi, and Vimal Viswanathan. "Getting Fit in a Sustainable Way: Design and Optimization of a Low-Cost Regenerative Exercise Bicycle" Designs (2022). https://doi.org/10.3390/designs6030059
