ARTICLE:

• FORCED CONVECTION MODELING AROUND A BICYCLE-HELMETED HEAD  download article

A. J. Ellis
Department of Aerospace Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia

I. S. Wong
Department of Aerospace Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia

A. F. Bertolini
Department of Aerospace Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia

L. A. Thompson
Department of Aerospace Engineering, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne 3001, Australia

ABSTRACT

In bicycle helmets today ventilation is seen as a key to market success of the helmet with a trend to more and more ventilation openings. Unfortunately these holes come at the detriment to the safety and structural integrity of the helmet. Currently some optimisation occurs in helmet ventilation design by manufacturers, however, it involves an iterative manufacturing process—making prototypes and testing them. This paper presents the first published attempt to incorporate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) into bicycle helmet ventilation design. In this paper the forced convective heat transfer around a cyclist's head, with and without a helmet, is theoretically modeled.

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253-260 pages

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