Towards a benchmark velocity database of a Generic Cycling Mannequin

Engineering of Sport 15 - Proceedings from the 15th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport (ISEA 2024)

Over the last decade, considerable effort has gone into understanding the flow around a cyclist to reduce the aerodynamic drag and, in turn, increase the rider’s speed. Recent studies typically use cyclist geometries obtained through scanning actual riders resulting in highly realistic cyclist models for numerical simulations and wind-tunnel experiments. Despite the relevance of the results, the model geometries are personal anthropometric data and, so, cannot be published. This hampers direct comparison of results and the ability to build upon the research of others. Similar to generic vehicle models, e.g., the DrivAer, that are used in the automotive aerodynamic community, a commonly used cyclist model has the potential to advance the general understanding of cycling aerodynamics. We aim to introduce open-source, realistic generic cyclist models (GCM) including a benchmark dataset of the surrounding flow. The goal of this work is to investigate the similarities and differences in the aerodynamic loads acting on the time-trial (TT) GCM and in the large-scale wake structures obtained from experiments in two different wind tunnels, using different flow measurement techniques.