PROD212 Thermofluids Assignment Laboratory Brief 2025-26 | UCNZ
PROD212 Laboratory brief: Bicycle Light
Redesign a bicycle light to improve the aerodynamics and thermal properties of the design. Your design consultancy (groups of 3) has been tasked with the redesign of a bicycle light that is facing some design challenges.
The bicycle light has five LEDs, a heat sink, and an ABS body. CAD files of this design are available to you through the class Learn site. There are two major problems with the current design that you’ve been asked to investigate and improve:
- The current design is not very aerodynamic, it should be redesigned to decrease drag.
- The current heat sink is undersized, and the ABS plastic of the body is exceeding the maximum service temperature of 89 ºC. It should be redesigned to address this.
Accordingly, your group has two parts to this assignment, which will be documented and assessed by a poster submission:
1) Model the aerodynamics and heat transfer in the current design to get a baseline of the design performance. At a minimum you should calculate the the drag force of the current design and the maximum temperature of the ABS in the current design.
2) Create a design revision that improves on the aerodynamics (reduces the drag force) and ensures that the temperature of the ABS stays below the 89 ºC limit. Only one design revision is required, but evidence of multiple design iterations will receive extra marks.
Note: This project will allow you to integrate your thermofluids knowledge with your product design skills through a digital deliverable. Note: In the real world the bike light may be mounted to a handlebar or to a rider’s helmet, which in practice would affect the flow field around the bike light.
To simplify this project, we are not including a handlebar or helmet in our models, instead this is a very simplified version of a bike light to give you experience working with simulation software for design purposes. Additionally, in this simplified scenario you may treat much of bike light as solid for simplicity (and processing) sake.
Part 1: Modelling of existing design
Part 2: Redesign of Bike light
