Wind forces generated by passing vehicles on cyclists and development of a model to determine the necessary width of bicycle lanes

• Applicant: Dr.-Ing. Christof-Bernhard Gromke, since 8/2019
• Subject Area: Fluid Mechanics
• Term: from 2010 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 173545595

More and more people use the bicycle as a means of transport. At thesame time, the danger poten-tial for cyclists increases. Truck traffic isgrowing over-proportionally and the spread of pedelecs (sales number2016: 560,000 pieces) increases, luring the elderly back on theirbikes. In order to be able to assess the safety of cyclists correctly, it isnecessary, in particular, to examine the pressure and suction forceswhich act on the cyclist when he is overtaken by different vehicletypes with dif-ferent passing distances and different vehicle speeds.There is a lack of scientific knowledge on this topic, and it is notpossible to estimate the width of a bicycle lane required to enable acyclist to safe-ly compensate for the disturbance caused by theovertaking process. Experimental field and labora-tory tests areplanned to measure the forces acting on the cyclist during theovertaking process and, in a further step, based on these results, adeterministic model for the determination of the neces-sary bicyclelane width shall be developed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr.-Ing. Bodo Ruck, until 8/2019