Hello
I am day dreaming about a project for a long time however i could not find any good resource over the web despite long hours of searching. Maybe someone could help;
Is it possible to turn wheel of a bicycle by placing magnets on the bicycle rim as shown on the attached picture?
Magnets will be moved by 2 brushless coils placed on 2 different parts of the bicycle body.
My plan is to control coils with esc and arduino.
Thank you in advance
Zero chance. Absolutely zero.
Google for "axial flux motor". Some of the big solar car teams have built motors directly into the wheel like that.
Magnets work over relatively short distance. You will need hundreds of magnets on the wheel and you have to get the coils very close to them, like within a milimeter or less.
Thank you very much for detailed enlighting explanation @morgans
Any reasonable design axial flux motor needs the stator coils fully around the diameter of the rotor, in a specific ratio to the number of magnets. The diameter of a bicycle wheel makes that highly impractical. There is also the simple physics of what moving the drive point further out on the radius does to the driving torque requirements, which is quite frankly, the obvious elephant in the room.
Andditionaly, a bicycle wheel will never withstand the lateral forces necessary to transmit the required energy. Too skinny in width and not enough spoke strength. You’d forever be wacking the magnets into the coils as the wheel deflected, which is what spoked wheels are designed to do when impacted. The bottom line line is that flimsy, spoked wheels are designed to be center driven. Driving at the outer diameter isn’t at all practical for a multitude of reasons.
There is a very detailed book from MIT press entitled “Bicyling Science” that covers a great deal of the engineering in a modern bicycle, the wheels being one of the more advanced topics. A very in-depth read if you want the necessary facts.
Is it possible to turn wheel of a bicycle by placing magnets on the bicycle rim as shown on the attached picture?
Yes, but for show only. Not practical for transportation.
thank you very much @WattsThat 
