Design of a full-suspension titanium bicycle for Van Nicholas Bicycles

Abstract

Founded in 2006 by the head of design Jan-Willem Sintnicolaas, Van Nicholas started as a family company. Nowadays, the team is extended by several employees. The founder, Jan-Willem Sintnicolaas, was the main European importer of Airborne Bicycles (USA), until the bankruptcy of Airborne in 2006. Owing to this Van Nicholas Bicycles has mastered more than ten years experience in titanium bicycles. Van Nicholas want to design and create the best possible Titanium frames for their intended application: making bikes go fast. Nowadays Van Nicholas creates bicycles for several applications: road, multi-sport, touring/cross and mountain. Emphasizing mountain biking, shows us that since the development of the sport in the 70’s, many new subtypes of mountain biking, such as Cross-country (XC) biking, All-mountain (AM) biking, Trail biking, Freeride (FR) biking, Downhill (DH) biking, all-day endurance biking - mainly road biking, Dirt jumping, Single-speed, Mountain-cross - also known as 4-cross racing (4X), Dual slalom (DS) biking, Short-cross (SC) biking, North shore biking, Indy-cross (IX) biking and Circle dirt track racing, have been developed. When using a normal mountain bike or a hardtail bicycle (a bicycle with only front fork suspension) on rough terrain, the rider will not be protected from the roughness of the terrain. Although comfort, safety and efficiency are very important when cycling on such roughness terrain. A full-suspension bicycle can offer those three factors and is generally regarded as the master of (downhill) mountain biking. The assortment of Van Nicholas however did only offer hardtail mountain bikes. Because of this ‘hardtail’ assortment Van Nicholas only addressed a part of the whole mountain biking segment. Introducing a full-suspension bicycle to their assortment allows Van Nicholas to address a much bigger segment. In order to design and develop a full-suspension titanium bicycle you have to deal with these three factors of comfort, safety and efficiency. Making the bikes rear wheel move up and down while still retaining good pedalling and braking performance is a technical and very difficult issue. According to Jon Whyte, described as the ‘father of the full-suspension mountain bike’, developing Formula 1 suspension was relatively easy in comparison. Moreover, from literature it is known that other bicycle manufactures take up to 1,5 a 2 year to develop a new full-suspension bicycle. Furthermore, there was the patent issue. All the suspension geometries, with exception of the single-pivot and faux bar designs, are thoroughly patented. From the company owner it was known that Van Nicholas Bicycles did not want to invest in a patented suspension system. Using someone else’s suspension system might not have quite the same cache, but it does save a lot of time, money and effort for other things. Even when using someone else’s suspension system a lot of difficulties are involved. From the mentioned issues, it could be concluded that introducing a full-suspension bicycle based on an existing suspension system without a patent, was the best solutions for Van Nicholas Bicycles. With the results of the research study, a questionnaire was developed. A group of 80 different mountain bikers were asked to fill in a questionnaire with more in-depth questions. The results of this second research study, led to an identified target group, namely a mature, more experienced biker with an age between 20 and 55 years old. This report shows the development of a full-suspension titanium bicycle for Van Nicholas bicycles, namely the Oreios. The Oreios is a full-suspension titanium bicycle based on an existing suspension mechanism, namely the single-pivot suspension technology. This suspension technology is patent free and could be used under any conditions. Within this full-suspension bicycle several own designed components are used, such as the rocker-arm, dropouts and of course the main frame of the bicycle. The other components are Original Equipment Manufacturer components, such as the rear shock, front fork, wheels and many more. The design of the bicycle is designed around these OEM components, without losing the single-pivot suspension technology and the brand style of Van Nicholas. Furthermore, the design is based on the demands and wishes of the intended end user, a 36 years old and experienced biker. The delivery of a possible prototype frame could take up to 6 weeks of waiting time. Therefore, the choice was made not to make a prototype of the full-suspension bicycle. Instead of a working prototype, a 3D model was made. Analyzing this 3D model, using Linkage 2.0, Solidworks and Cosmosworks have led to an optimized design. Moreover, realistic images of the product were made to convince the company and intended users of the Oreios full-suspension bicycle.