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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Electric Upgrades - Supercapacitor Electric Bicycle, John Chen, Wilson Fletcher, Spencer Esparza
Electric Upgrades - Supercapacitor Electric Bicycle, John Chen, Wilson Fletcher, Spencer Esparza
Electrical Engineering
Supercapacitors provide high current capabilities compared to conventional lithium-ion batteries, allowing for fast charging and discharging of electrical energy. This project seeks to test the benefits of supercapacitors in an electric bicycle unit in order to gain higher regenerative energy. The main components of the bicycle are its regenerative motor, supercapacitor array, and motor controller. Developing the project will provide data on the feasibility of using alternative battery storage and charging.
Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox
Veloelectric: Creating A Device That Harvests Energy From Bicycles, Austin Hall, Daniel Stohr, Tj Fox
Mechanical Engineering
Long distance mountain bikers, bike-packers, and many bikers in developing countries rely on electrical devices for safety and communication. These specific groups of people operate in areas with little to no electricity, and often times have no power to sustain their devices. The purpose of this Cal Poly senior project, VeloElectric, was to design, build, and test a kinetic energy harvester for bicycles that can be used to charge common mobile devices via USB. This senior project team created a device that attaches directly to a bicycle and uses vibrations to generate energy, which in turn powers a variety of …
The Bicycle-Powered Smartphone Charger, Chris Arntzen
The Bicycle-Powered Smartphone Charger, Chris Arntzen
Master's Theses
This thesis entails the design and fabrication of a smartphone charger that is powered by a bicycle dynamo hub. In addition to the design and validation of the charger prototype, this thesis involves the testing and characterization of the dynamo hub power source, the design and construction of specialized test equipment, and the design and prototyping of a handlebar-mounted case for the smartphone and charging electronics. With the intention of making the device a commercial product, price, aesthetics, and marketability are of importance to the design. An appropriate description of the charger circuit is a microcontroller-based energy management system, tailored …