Bicycle Pitch-over Reconstruction Analysis

During a pitch-over event, the forward momentum of the combined bicycle and rider is suddenly arrested causing the rider and bicycle to rotate about the front wheel and also possibly propelling the rider forward. This paper examines the pitch-over of a bicycle and rider using two methods different from previous approaches. One method uses Newton’s 2^nd Law directly and the other method uses the principle of impulse and momentum, the integrated form of Newton’s 2^nd Law. The two methods provide useful equations, contributing to current literature on the topic of reconstructing and analyzing bicycle pitch-over incidents. The analysis is supplemented with Madymo simulations to evaluate the kinematics and kinetics of the bicycle and rider interacting with front wheel obstructions of different heights. The effect of variables such as rider weight, rider coupling to the bicycle, bicycle speed, and obstruction height on resulting kinematics were evaluated. The analysis shows that a larger momentum requires a higher obstruction to arrest that momentum and results in a pitch-over event. The Madymo findings are correlated to the predicted kinematics from the two numerical methods. These analytical models provide tools when Madymo software is not available. Validation of these models is explored using Madymo.