Biking in Style: ME Students Fabricate a Spokeless Bicycle

“While there have been many concepts for a spokeless bike, none have gone into production,” said Henry Misas, senior in mechanical engineering. “It was the perfect challenge for our class.” The students had 12 weeks to go from choosing a project, through design, fabrication, testing, and demonstration.

 

Using standard parts, the class was able to fabricate at least a partial spokeless bicycle—time constraints prevented them from implementing a fully-spokeless design concept. “It’s a little heavy and it doesn’t drive as smoothly as it could because of the bearings,” said Misas, “but we could make it better.” All along the way, they sought the expertise of others in the field, gaining advice and hands-on help from industry representatives and local bike shops as well as Yale’s School of Architecture and the Department of Chemistry’s welding lab.

 

 

The class, normally taught by professor John Morrell, was taught this year by industry engineer, Vern Van Fleet, from Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. It is a required course for ABET Mechanical Engineering majors and, for most, the much anticipated culmination of three years of mainly theoretical studies. “It’s an amazing feeling to design and fabricate an innovative product,” says Misas.