Wednesday, January 23, 2008

New Wind Tunnel Model Tested...

Few folks in the industry have jumped to rapidly prototyped wax models with help from Hollywood special effects people (example, Gentle Giant with Cervelo). Companies are now rethinking humans. Full sized human riders are a disadvantage in wind tunnel tests. They are fat in the offseason, lazy, bored, cold, suffer tunnel vision, grumble/scratch when asked to sit still in the aero position, complain of stiff joints, sore muscles, and often ask unnecessary questions over the prospects of surviving while meeting the turbo fan eye to eye.

With all the downtime from the above considered, the costs ofblowing precious air at these undeserving folks (wax models included) are overwhelming.

Irritant testers have ordered an assessment study for a new rider design, fully manipulating the fluid dynamics principle of Geometric Similarity. One proposed design was :

1. Cute, motivated, exploring, fresh and full of life.
2. Has the highest observed power to weight and drag ratio (unvalidated, duh its the bicycle industry...)
3. Extremely flexible, with lowest rider-bicycle combined center of gravity achieved for an aerodynamic application.

2 comments:

Will said...

Very nice.

It's good to see them starting young.

He has a fairly big head to body ratio but looks a natural on the bike

Chris said...

Yeah. His head is going to catch a lot of wind.

Your last post on the Iso Truss was good. Those things are ungodly expensive.