For a final engineering project for the CSU Junior Design Class(ME302) students were allowed to select a group of 3-5 people, and then design and model a human powered vehicle. While no actual vehicle was ever built, concept design, modeling, and analysis had to occur.

Rough sketches, were made, concepts considered, and eventually a fairly traditional "recumbent" style of bicycle was selected. The frame and roll-bar were analyzed for stress concentration and displacement. The vehicle had a encapsulating fairing that was designed in Pro-E, and then analyzed with Fluent. The project was the result of a collective effort to generate concepts, model, and analyze the HPV.

This is the completed HPV, shown with a semi-transparent fairing:

This is the main component, the uni-rail frame with integrated rollbar:

The roll-bar analyzed for stress and displacement:

The following two images show the frame stress and displacement from the load of the rider:

Fluent was used primarily to calculate the drag coefficient of the fairing(without the HPV in place), the following photos show the results of the Fluent analysis:

Drag Coefficient:

Static Pressure Contours:

Velocity Vectors:
Velocity Magnitude:


These were some final concept sketches prior to final design selection: