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Sunday, March 3, 2019

Some recent Publications



Hi

Just wanted to let you know about a couple of on-line articles I've written which have become available in the last few months.  When I was at uni studying for a Master's a few years ago, part of the culture was writing papers for conferences, and I attended and wrote papers 2 years in a row for the Australasian Transport Research Forum or ATRF . When a call came out for papers for ATRF 2018 early last year, I thought I had something in me to write, and so started on a paper.

Initially I approached one of my ex-work colleagues Mehran Ektasabi to help co-write, and he introduced me to Saman Gorji who had just finished a phd.  When it came down to writing though, Saman and Mehran were not in a position to help much so I plugged on alone.  In the end I wrote 2 articles, 1 accepted by ATRF and now published online here, and the second, initially rejected online by ATRF but now published online at Hupi.

The second article published should really be read first!  It (Hupi Article) deals almost exclusively with mechanical devices while the other (ATRF) deals with electrical and mechanical.

The background to the articles started a long time ago.  Although I'm not sure that I got the first issue when it first came out, I collected all of Bike Culture magazine which ran from December 1993 to August 2000, and then subscribed to Velovision, getting the first edition and staying a subscriber until its recent extended leave. And Bike Culture has the nucleus or prehistory of the articles in issues 15 on the predecessors of Series Hybrids and 18 on the front drive hub gear bicycle.

Stefan Daniel's 2004 folding recumbent.


I've had reminders of the front hub technology ever since.  In 2004 my family travelled to Germany and I took part in the Spezi Folding Recumbent Competition (English Translation via google) there.  Stefan Daniel had a folding front hub recumbent at the competition and I mentioned this in a 2010 interview with Jim Wilson, along with the possibility of using a Pinion Gearbox as a front hub gearbox.  More recently I have ridden Aki Kubota's front drive hub bike built by Robert Warszak, and Alexander Vittouris researched front drive velomobiles and preceded  me as a master's degree student at Monash University design school.

The appendix of the ATRF article is a bit of a design provocation, a mashup of series hybrid and front hub drive technology. It probably won't be in bikes in 20 years time but who knows?

Regards

Steve Nurse

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