We’ve seen many bicycles designs that incorporate sustainable materials, including bamboo. But most are built around traditional frame designs. Now Alexander Vittouris, a master’s student at Monash University in Australia had devised a three-wheeled vehicle made of the quick growing grass.
He is in the running for the Australian Design Award for his concept bicycle. Rather than take the time to harvest, weave and compress the bamboo, which has traditionally been needed to make the grass conform to traditional bicycle frame design, Vittouris instead made his vehicle conform to the shape of the bamboo – creating a skeleton frame from the long strands.
In other words, his Ajiro bicycle was essentially grown in the backyard of his Malvern East home. After taking shape, traditional bike parts were incorporated, so the result is a front-pedal design that resembles a recumbent bicycle.
And while Vittouris admits the first concept didn’t come cheap, he does envision a future of mass-grown vehicles, planted in fields.
When performance modifications are done to a car, a dynameter can be used to measure the horsepower and torque output at the wheels to analyze and further tune the vehicle. There is an endless number of changes that can be performed on a car that the dyno can measure, but it alone can not be used alone to analyze the effects of drag over the body and chassis without testing in a wind tunnel.
