Print Email Facebook Twitter Human Power Empirically Explored Title Human Power Empirically Explored Author Jansen, A.J. Contributor Stevels, A.L.N. (promotor) Faculty Industrial Design Engineering Department Design Engineering Date 2011-01-18 Abstract Harvesting energy from the users’ muscular power to convert this into electricity is a relatively unknown way to power consumer products. It nevertheless offers surprising opportunities for product designers; human-powered products function independently from regular power infrastructure, are convenient and can be environmentally and economically beneficial. This work provides insight into the knowledge required to design human-powered energy systems in consumer products from a scientific perspective. It shows the developments of human-powered products from the first introduction of the BayGen Freeplay radio in 1995 till current products and provides an overview and analysis of 211 human-powered products currently on the market. Although human power is generally perceived as beneficial for the environment, this thesis shows that achieving environmental benefit is only feasible when the environmental impact of additional materials in the energy conversion system is well balanced with the energy demands of the products functionality. User testing with existing products showed a preference for speeds in the range of 70 to 190 rpm for crank lengths from 32 to 95 mm. The muscular input power varied from 5 to 21 W. The analysis of twenty graduation projects from the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering in the field of human-powered products, offers an interesting set of additional practice based design recommendations. The knowledge based approach of human power is very powerful to support the design of human-powered products. There is substantial potential for improvements in the domains energy conversion, ergonomics and environment. This makes that human power, when applied properly, is environmentally and economically competitive over a wider range of applications than thought previously. Subject non-conventional energy sourceshuman powerenergy harvestingresearch by design To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6a8f5511-432b-45b7-8e92-23a4dfbb4237 ISBN 9789051550726 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type doctoral thesis Rights (c) 2011 Jansen, A.J. Files PDF human_power_empirically_e ... binder.pdf 12.03 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:6a8f5511-432b-45b7-8e92-23a4dfbb4237/datastream/OBJ/view