Flow over Bicycle

Aim : To calculate drag force against a cyclist.

• To write a program to plot Velocity vs Drag force.
• To write a program to plot Drag Co-efficient vs Drag force.

The factors involved are Velocity,Drag coefficient,Frontal Area,Density of air.

Description :

Matlab Code:

%calculating the drag force on Bicycle

%Assigning Input Parameters

Code Sample-1:

%Coefficient of Drag
c_d=linspace(0.1,0.8,100)

%Frontal Area in m^2
Area=0.3

%Density of air in kg/m^3
rho=1.2

%velocity in m/s
v=linspace(1,100,100)

%Calculating Drag Force
drag_force=0.5*rho*Area*c_d.*v.^2

plot(c_d,drag_force)
xlabel ('coefficient of drag')
ylabel ('DRAG')

Code Sample-2:

%calculating the drag force on Bicycle
clear all
close all
clc

%Assigning Input Parameters

%Coefficient of Drag
c_d=0.8

%Frontal Area in m^2
Area=0.3

%Density of air in kg/m^3
rho=1.2

%velocity in m/s
v=linspace(1,100,100)

%Calculating Drag Force
drag_force=0.5*rho*Area*c_d.*v.^2

plot(v,drag_force)
xlabel('Velocity')
ylabel('Drag_Force')

%Parabolic Graph is obtained Due to the square of velocity

Plots:

Plot of Drag vs coefficient of Drag:

Plot of Coefficient of Drag vs Velocity:

Results and Conclusions:

The parabolic profile is observed to the velocity variation. Aerodynamics over any body starts from this procedure for basic references.