While continuing work on the TerraTrike recumbent body project or velomobile as they are known over in Europe I came across another puzzle. I put a full sized figure into the computer model of the velomobile just to see how it would look. To my surprise I find that I still need to do a bit more tweaking on the design.
Here is a good shot of my little man inside the velomobile. Looks pretty good until you take a closer look at where his feet end up.
In this closer shot you can see what I am talking about. If I build the velomobile as I have it designed here your feet would end up striking the underside of the top section of the body. Not a good thing to be sure. I am more than happy that I find this kind of stuff out while I am still messing with the computer before I get this far along in the real construction and have to make major changes to fix it.
The green arcs on the ribs that you see also in this close up view are what I will have to change on the both sides of the ribs before I start construction. This will give me two inches of clearance for my toes while I am driving the vehicle. The skin will only be 1/4 inch thick composite so it should give me the lightness and strength that I am looking for in the design.
The reason I originally wanted a human figure in my computer model was to see if an enclosed roof could be added to the design. The enclosed roof would be removable so that during hot weather it could be taken off or added for cooler weather. This idea is still just a thought and I will have to play with it more once I get the new body blisters dialed in for the design. The image above turned out better than I had hoped with the addition of the blisters. Still looks nice and smooth. So as you can see blisters can be a good thing. I'll keep plugging along with the design. You keep checking in from time to time to see how it all turns out. Have a good day tinkering!
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