Baino F
Materials Science and, Chemical Engineering Department, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy.
J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2011 Mar;51(1):59-65.
Most biomechanical studies on bicycle ergonomics focused on racing efficiency and often neglected the investigation of cycling comfort, due to the difficulties related to the people's subjective feelings. This research work aims at analyzing the comfort on bicycle from an objective viewpoint; specifically, an attempt to relate subject's preferences, determined in a dynamic way, with his/her physical features, acquired by means of anthropometric measurements, was carried out. The validity of some existing and commonly used "rules of thumb" for bicycle fitting is discussed and investigated, and new indications are also proposed to achieve an optimal bike configuration.
A group of 120 volunteers was considered in this study; they were non-professional cyclists. First, the participants' anthropometric features were acquired; afterwards, the volunteers were asked to cycle on a bicycle fitting system (adjustable gym bike) and then to modify the simulator settings till the optimal subjective feelings of comfort are reached. The linear correlation coefficient between the measured anthropometric features and the geometrical preferences adopted on the cycling simulator was calculated.
On one hand, the data analysis allows to propose new indications to achieve an optimal postural comfort on the basis of the physical features of the subject, but, on the other hand, the results confirm that the comfort on bicycles is highly related to personal preferences and, therefore, it is strongly subjective.
The main conclusions and implications of this study can be summarized as follows: 1) the comfort on bicycle is strongly subjective as it is highly related to personal preferences; 2) an optimal bicycle setting can be achieved only by taking in to account the most relevant anthropometric features of every single cyclist; 3) a station for acquiring cyclists' anthropometric measurements and a bicycle simulator (adjustable gym bike) can act as very useful tools for designing optimal and custom-made bicycle configurations.
大多数关于自行车人体工程学的生物力学研究都集中在骑行效率上，由于与人们主观感受相关的困难，往往忽视了骑行舒适性的研究。这项研究工作旨在从客观的角度分析自行车的舒适性；具体而言，尝试将通过动态方式确定的受试者偏好与其通过人体测量获得的身体特征联系起来。讨论并研究了一些现有的常用自行车适配“经验法则”的有效性，并提出了新的建议以实现最佳的自行车配置。
本研究纳入了一组120名志愿者；他们均为非专业自行车骑行者。首先，获取参与者的人体测量特征；之后，要求志愿者在自行车适配系统（可调节健身自行车）上骑行，然后修改模拟器设置，直到达到最佳的主观舒适感。计算所测量的人体测量特征与骑行模拟器上采用的几何偏好之间的线性相关系数。
一方面，数据分析能够根据受试者的身体特征提出实现最佳姿势舒适性的新建议，但另一方面，结果证实自行车的舒适性与个人偏好高度相关，因此具有很强的主观性。
本研究的主要结论和启示可总结如下：1）自行车的舒适性具有很强的主观性，因为它与个人偏好高度相关；2）只有考虑每个骑行者最相关的人体测量特征，才能实现最佳的自行车设置；3）一个用于获取骑行者人体测量数据的站点和一个自行车模拟器（可调节健身自行车）可以作为设计最佳定制自行车配置的非常有用的工具。
