Cozy Beehive

Nanotechnology Application In Bicycles : How Good?

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:49:00 +0000

Readers may know that last year, I addressed how carbon nanotechnology technology had been seeping into the bicycling scene. While by themselves, the properties are very remarkable, the issue we all want to sort out is, how much is the end product we care about - the bicycle frame - improved by using such tech?

Some readers in that article held the view that this technology is an "April Fool's joke" on the consumer, that the change in finished properties in the frame with nanotube reinforcement is extremely small and not worth it considering the increases in cost. Is this just a "feel good" marketing ploy from the cycling industry? Should it have prevented failures such as this one?

Today's article below is borrowed from one of the writings of Dexter Johnson, who is an IEEE technical blogger writing for Nanoclast. Here, he's posing the question of what nanotube reinforced bicycle frames really have to offer in terms of cost-benefit and also explores the different buzz words seen in bicycle marketing literature. Do they mean anything at all?

Enjoy the read and let me know what you think.

Nanotechnology And The Bicycle

Dexter Johnson, IEEE
September 9, 2009

At a conference that I had put the program together for a few years back, a speaker during his presentation suggested that maybe he would supply some carbon nanotubes to a bicycle manufacturer and have Lance Armstrong ride the bike in the Tour de France. What a great marketing idea, he thought out loud.

Being an avid cyclist and an even more avid fan of cycling, I explained to him that the professional cycling federation had put a weight limit on bicycles and that maybe there was not much to be gained in pursuing this marketing avenue.

How wrong I was. Since then, which I believe was around 2005, I have become aware of at least three high-end bicycles that employ some kind of nanoparticle in the frame.

The three that I know of are Spanish-based BH Bicycles, Swiss-based BMC and most recently I’ve discovered Italian-based Pinarello has gotten on the nano bandwagon.

What does the nanotech actually do for these bikes other than to raise their asking price slightly north of a new economy car? Well, it’s hard to say except by taking a look at their marketing copy.

Let’s start with the BH G4 bike. Here the marketing copy reads: “BH achieves this magical blend of low-weight, great ride and toughness using Nanotechnology resins.”

“Nanotechnology resins”? After reading the rest it appears what they mean is that they are using carbon nanotubes as a filler material between the carbon fibers. Despite the rather breathless description of how carbon nanotubes “have a strength-to-weight ratio orders of magnitude greater than steel”, they never quite get around to saying whether the CNT-enabled resins make the carbon fiber bicycle any stronger or lighter than any other run-of-the-mill resin.

BMC it turns out is using carbon nanotubes in exactly the same way as BH (not really a surprise to be honest). But BMC does manage to say that the material matrix that is developed using these carbon nanotubes is 20% stronger for practically the same weight. I am a little concerned with the usage of the phrase “practically the same weight”. And for that matter what does “stronger” mean?

Pinarello appears to be much more discrete about their foray into nanomaterials, but they do manage to say the following: “the exclusive 60HM1K carbon by Torayca® with Nanoalloy™ that prevents sudden breakage.”

Wow, now we’ve got a nanoalloy (and it’s trademarked)! From what I have been able to piece together about the “Nanoalloy™” from the bicycle trade press is that:

“Nanoalloy… disperses nanoscale elastomers between the carbon fibers. These elastomers have the ability to absorb impacts and prevent the propagation of cracks as they occur.” The result: Pinarello claims the Dogma frame weighs about 860 grams, 40 grams less than the Prince but is 23 percent more resistant to impacts."

Could this resistance to impacts that Pinarello describes be the same “stronger” that BMC offers up?

Is there anything to all of this nano talk in bicycles other than a cool marketing angle? Impossible to say outside of conducting some real experiments, and it’s hard to imagine anyone being that interested to bother.

Now if we can develop a material that would be perfect for the rigors of a bicycle frame by using a material by design method and then build the material and the frame atom-by-atom then I might pay a premium price for it. Will I still be able to ride a bike by then? Stay tuned.

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8 Things On Lance Armstrong From The "Other Side Of The Grass"

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:07:00 +0000

Before you start :

a. You may use any browser other than Firefox to optimally hear the audio clips below.
b. Should you wish to share this with friends via email or with any others in a debate over the internet, use this shortened link that directs to this page : http://bit.ly/5g4QHY

A great person once said that history is written by the victor. The one who is smart and cunning, who wins and has the money, who is extremely powerful and has a throng of followers around them, who can literally decide your fate if you turn your back on them...these are the people who have the muscle to bend a true story to their liking and ultimately to their advantage.

It's all too easy to be star-struck watching the hundreds of video clips of Lance Armstrong on Youtube. Yeah, it looks all so cool and inspiring, no doubt. And its easy to buy a bunch of books written by him and his lieutenants and believe what he invariably asks you to slurp in. And it's easier going with the fan following based around him and his brand and do exactly what they're all doing.

But it's difficult to go out against the tide and exercise some independent critical thinking skills to challenge the root of the system. We're often times lazy to explore or plainly just narrow minded to accept the other half of the story. When we believe in something, we fix it in our world view and build castles around it to protect it. But if castles are built on loose foundation, like the story of the man who built his house on mud, it will topple sooner or later. When it crashes down, that will be a mind-blowing experience.

So what is the other half of the story for those of you who haven't heard at all? Join in this post as I amass together a few facts, figures and audio clips that are absolutely critical if you are to have a "balanced knowledge" of the persona of Lance Armstrong. Some of these I collected over from some who were bold enough to only share, talk and write. By all means, this is a re-pollination of facts but done so as to never let people forget the past. So get yourself a cup of tea or coffee and focus for a while from the 'other side of the grass'.

1. "LANCE ARMSTRONG'S DOPING HISTORY" : This 50 page report challenges us to think about the curious holes in Lance Armstrong's story and his strange attitudes towards doping in general, especially given his stature in the sport. You'll be going "But Why" in little-time.

Lance Armstrong Doping History

2. "THERE IS NO DOUBT IN MY MIND THAT HE TOOK EPO DURING THE 1999 TOUR" : Read on through NYVelocity as reputed exercise physiologist Dr. Michael Ashenden from Australia explains the 6 positives from Armstrong's '99 urine samples with a level of detail you can only imagine. In short, there is 100% certainty that all results from the tests were valid and news stories and other allegations trying to bend this fact is simply misinformation. See Link.

3. "GROSS ERRORS IN CALCULATION OF ARMSTRONG'S CYCLING EFFICIENCY" : PhD Sports Scientists from South Africa elucidate the outright gross errors and measurement inconsistencies in Edward Coyle's battery of tests performed on Armstrong at the University of Texas. This study is often quoted to others to make believe that Armstrong is somehow magically way off the charts when it comes to pedaling efficiency. Well, consider that the latest research has blasted the myth apart with a double barreled shotgun. See Link.

4. "AND IN A RELATIVELY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME, ARMSTRONG WAS VISITING FERARRI FOR 3-4 DAYS AT A TIME" : One of the most honest journalists around happens to be showing honesty in return for little money. And our cancer humanitarian called him a "f**cking little troll" while the honest journalist returns only professionalism in his job. In this candid interview with David Walsh at NYVelocity, you learn a few good things going on that are nicely hidden behind the charisma of Lance and the world of pro cycling. Guaranteed that you won't get this in your Texas newspaper. See Link.

5. "WE'VE BEEN FED A PACK OF LIES" : A short interview with Walsh by NPR. Team Motorola had decided to dope like the others and this was gained from inside sources working very closely with the team. "Cycling has gone into the gutter" because of the silence of folks who knew all along the real kind of game going on behind the scenes.

6. "YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A DIABOLICAL JERK TO DOPE..." : When your own wife knows something is seriously different as you charge up Sestriere, dragging along another EPO filled black sheep to help him win the 1999 Tour, and when she goes against all odds to come out and be sincere and forthright about the all these events from the perspective of friends who were close to Lance, it makes for a powerful take on the issue. This 1 hour revelation from Betsy Andreu as she spoke to Competitor Radio will shake the castle you had built around your view of Lance...the truthful, kind, charity-driven hero who is known to spark streaks of performance miracles over the course of many years.

7 : "STEPHANIE McIlAVAIN AND HER HUSBAND WERE UNDER IMMENSE PRESSURE FROM OAKLEY..." : When your very future career is put at stake because of what you will say in court, you comply so that truth is bent in favor of the manipulator of truth. There is substantiated evidence that people involved in Lance Armstrong's circle in his early days were 'straightened' to say what Lance Armstrong wanted them to say. Fortunately, in a sea of liars, only one woman selflessly stands strong to tell the truth. Here is Betsy's interview in 5 parts with an Irish radio show host.

8. "I WAS IN THAT ROOM AND I HEARD IT, I DEFINITELY WON'T LIE" :Why was Stephanie Mcllavain, an employee of Armstrong's sponsor Oakley so completely shaken and nervous in court? Because she was disgraced as a liar with irrefutable audio proof. Greg Lemond taped a phone conversation with her on September 21, 2004 without telling her, where she went on to candidly admit hearing and knowing the things Lance did in his great pharmaceutical career. That audio, presented below, is not the best in the world, but if the listener gives it the required attention and patience, many disgusting things can be learned about the state of pro cycling back in those days. At one point in the clip, she goes nonchalantly with reference to drug taking, "Its going to be funny to see what George Hincapie's baby is going to look like." Horrible. Hear it :

P.S : "THE CHURCH OF LANCE ARMSTRONG" : And of course, there are those, who in spite of many compelling eye openers, will still go on chanting their champion's name in utter disregard for the other half of the story. That's all fine but then some of them will vehemently oppose any viewpoint that shake their world view and force down their own figments of imagination into other people's heads without "doing research". If you don't happen to go with their viewpoints, they label you as cynics and unbelievers and cast you into the sea of other "myopic lowlifes" who are all supposedly jealous of a superstar's success or have no regard for the human condition. I have a special name for these groups of people and it came across in a very popular post on this blog. See Link.

Final Note : This blog will always remain democratic, unlike others such as this one which clearly has in the past censored out comments that don't belong to the collective vision shared by the blog's "management". So feel free to voice your opinions after you have read and heard the above post. Have a good week ahead!

Fishy Marketing : The Slippery Speedplay Mannequin

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:26:00 +0000

"I'm at the Speedplay Booth. Their leg mannequin has the biggest ass I've ever seen."

- someone at Interbike this year.

While I appreciate bike technology in all forms, I can't stand the inglorious ways by which people try to sell it to you. Readers may know that I run a section on this site titled "Marketing Mishaps". For some time now, I have been collecting events in our biking world that seem fit for it, you know - haphazardly done marketing through poor science, cheesy ad material and other nuances that just turn intelligent people off. I think I have found some new material today.

I present to you the "Slippery Speedplay Mannequin". It's all slippery (and smoke and mirrors too) if you read on.

Dynamic Test Procedure : Quickly, here's a summary of what Speedplay did to try and back up the superiority of their pedal design, the Zero. They placed the mechanized legs of an impressive mannequin (only legs) on a bike in the San Diego low speed wind tunnel. The legs were attached through cleats to the Zero pedals. The contraption was then made to pedal for a mere 5 minutes at 100 rpm in a normalized wind velocity of 30 mph. Apparently the tech guys did this twice with a 3 hole and a 4 hole mounting sole to capture any differences from mounting. Finally, they compared the results to the same procedure done to two other competitor pedals from Shimano and Look (brand was kept secret).

What To Measure? : Speedplay was interested in measuring the drag co-efficient, Cd, multiplied with frontal Area, A of the mannequin and bike system. This term appears in the equation for retarding drag force in cycling. I have written the equation for you below and what the terms mean :

It appears that even Speedplay is muddled with the terms and their definitions. In several places, they write as if they're measuring the term drag co-efficient Cd when even the computer screen in their report shows "CdA". On top of that, they take this to be a dimensionless quantity. I wonder what kind of drink the author may have had the night before?

Where Measured : San Diego Low Speed Wind Tunnel at the Air & Space Technology Center. Test section dimension of facility is 2.44 x 3.66m. Test section cross-sectional area is 8.50m^2.

Results : Going with the poorly presented results of the test, here's what I think I gleaned from it. Tabulated for you, these numbers are for one test for each item, for a duration of 5 minutes and 100 rpm cadence. Please note, all these numbers are claimed by Speedplay. The percentage differences between each line item were done by me.

Conclusions To Customers : Speedplay goes on to claim that their calculations show such drag reductions result in a time saving of 5.5 seconds/hour and 33 seconds/hour for 3 and 4 hole mounts respectively. This, they say, is equivalent to the savings gained from replacing a standard wheel with a deep section, aero front wheel.

The fishy things going on in this whole agenda are the following :

1. Time savings for whom? : While the contraption is really impressive, the 33 second savings computed by Speedplay, if correct, are for the lower legs of a "robot" riding into 30 mph headwind in a wind-tunnel specifically with 4 hole mounted cleats. C'mon, even an ape won't believe that an actual human being using this will get the same amount of claimed benefits.

2. As opposed to what? : The number of pedals in the test are small (2) and the specific brands chosen have been hidden from us. Which is understandable but again, I suppose any idiot could test the Zero pedals with a competitor's junk hardware from the past years and say that it's better. Were all brands tested the latest in market?

3. 33 seconds savings, really? : Those claimed savings seem artificially huge to me. Just for an illustration, the 2004 Nike "Swift Spin" time trial suit prototype (with tracksuit and leggings), worn by a pro cyclist, showed a time savings of 33 seconds when pedaling into 32 mph wind, over its 2003 development model. This suit is still considered by many to be state-of-the-art stuff and a production model was used in a couple of Tour de France's. To claim that switching to a small pair of pedals under a robot's legs equal the time savings of a top aerodynamic piece of apparel worn by a actual human in aero position points to something extremely fishy in the calculations. It even diminishes the many years of work Nike and other researchers conducted in trying to create a more aero suit for pro cyclists.

4. Where's the math? : Obviously, what Speedplay fails to show is the methodology behind their conclusions. How did they arrive at 33 seconds/hour time savings? Moreover, they don't investigate the variation of CdA numbers as the sample size increases by limiting themselves to one test run for each type of pedal. The worst part is, they test each pedal for 5 minutes. Hence, we don't have an indication of the level of error and range of CdA values over many trials. Now you have to ask, is this really 33 second time savings? Or something smaller?

The bottomline?

As is apparent to others, Speedplay wants you to buy their Zero Pedals which will free you of between $130-$330 (Chromoly-Titanium). They calculate that if you cut your legs apart, dispose of the trunk and then pedal a bike in a rare and bloody time trial of 5 minutes keeping everything tight and in-plane like a mannequin, you'll save as much time riding into a 30 mph headwind as does tossing out a 32 spoke wheel for a slick aero wheel in the front.

Copywrited picture from Speedplay

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Dirty Jobs To Feature Contador's Summer Work At Astana

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:33:00 +0000

Yazoo! News : Mike Rowe, the charismatic face of Discovery's Dirty Jobs TV show, had been soliciting viewers for their own videos of dirty jobs performed by them in order to get new ideas for next year. And now it seems he has a finalist.

Pro winningest cyclist Contador and his management staff were browsing the internet on a Spanish beach 2 months back and had chanced upon Rowe's website. Which is when they got the idea of submitting Contador's summer work earlier this year in the Tour de France as video input to Discovery. Rowe confirmed this morning that he took a good look at the submission and just loves it!

Contador, the best cyclist in the world, had the worst job possible at the Tour when he was asked to serve a retired veteran on his own team. This came on top of the aspirations he had to bag another Grand Tour which made the whole affair a complete living albatross around the neck.

Dirty jobs for Contador included fixing the veteran's flats on the course, serving him meals and preparing tea for him back in the hotel while watching him play on his mobile phone. Not only was the psychological pressure high and team equipment/leadership not guaranteed to him, but he also had to battle the veteran's Twitter attacks while ousting him and others on steep climbs.

It didn't end there. While lifting the Tour trophy at Paris on the final day, he also had to engage the veteran's smirks and awkward facial gestures with a number of 'pistol rounds'. After 21 days of hard effort, it wasn't surprising he couldn't aim the invisible rounds correctly which made them go astray and hit a couple of Tour officials in the earlobes. The aggravated officials screwed up his day in return by playing him the Danish national anthem.

Contador has advised Rowe that to feature this particular dirty job on his show, hard hat would be a Giro helmet, work boots would be strictly white Sidis and clothes would be the old team apparel kept in a chest at home.

Rowe will spend this winter at a training camp with Contador. While plenty of hill climbing repeats are on the agenda, other drills include training the Discovery Channel man at getting the pistol shooting precise and returning Twitter attacks with competitive Spanish volleys. Sources say Rowe is planning to train an additional 5 hours everyday at the shooting range with bare hands. He will also be attending classes in 'Spanish Insults' at a local university.

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60% Of Cycling Hour Records Due To Engineering

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 20:31:00 +0000

I came across an unsurprising insight into the role that engineering plays in the cycling world hour record. Here's a quote from a recent Science News mag piece titled "Breaking The Speed Limit", which explores studies done to extract the role of better engineering in these records, and to quantify that role. The only thing different in the quote here on the blog is that I have directly linked to these studies for your reference.

"The cycling hour record — the distance an athlete can pedal in one hour on a flat track — steadily rose in the 1980s and 1990s as riders began to use new high-tech gear and streamlined riding positions to improve their aerodynamics. In 1999, University of Tennessee researchers used a model that accounted for adjustments in bicycle design, riding position and other modifications. Writing in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, the team reported that about 60 percent of the world records in the previous two decades of cycling were due to better engineering. In 2000, cycling leaders essentially locked the sport in a time machine, declaring that cycling equipment and position had to be similar to designs used to set the hour cycling record in 1972 — an effort, Neptune wrote this summer, “to prevent the hour record from becoming influenced more by technology than by the athletes.” Records set between 1972 and 2000 are still on the books, but in a category called “best hour performance.”

The above graph was originally shown in the paper "The Influence of Muscle Physiology and Advanced Technology on Sports Performance". It was compiled by Neptune et al and appeared in the 2009 edition of The Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering. Richard Neptune is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Looking at the way Fabian Cancellara has been performing lately, if he mounts a specially made bike and gives this event a try in the Superman position, one wouldn't be too far in guessing that he'd run away with UCI's Best Human Effort record. The question is, will he try?

RELATED RESOURCES :

Recumbent Blog : Cycling Hour Record Time Chart With Recumbents Included
Fabian Cancellara Thinks About Attempting Hour Record

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10 Fantastic World Records With Bicycles

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:01:00 +0000

So many different feats have been achieved by humans with bicycles over the years. Some of them (a handful actually), recognized by the Guinness Book Of World Records, have been collected by me today and posted here for your viewing.

Can you blast away loosely held limits and challenge these individuals for one of the most coveted recognitions around? Enjoy...

1. Largest Bicycle Parade

Volvic Taiwan, Da Jia Jenn Lann Temple and Taichung County Government together organized an event that broke the record for the largest bicycle parade on March 1, 2008. A total of 2,152 bicyclists participated in the "Ten Thousand People for BIKE" challenge.

2. Largest Group Of Stationary Cyclists

The record for the most people static cycling is 412 and was achieved by Esporta Health & Fitness (UK) during their annual conference in Gloucester, UK, on 19 February 2009.

3. Most Distance On A Static Bike in 24 Hours

On 19 January 2008, the New York Sports Clubs/Cadence Cycling Team – consisting of Tucker Brown, Chad Butts, Holden Comeau, Mikael Hanson, Thomas Wood (all USA) and Stefan Kusurelis (Germany) rode a Guiness World Record total of 1,335.5 km (829.84 miles) on a spinning bike, which means that the team cycled at an average pace of 55.65 km/h (or 34.58 mph). The record for the greatest distance on a static cycle in one hour by an individual is 65.48 km (40.69 miles) and was achieved by Holden Comeau (USA) from the same team, that same day. The records were broken during New York Sports Clubs' Saints and Spinners event, a 24-hour Spin[R]-a-Thon benefit in New York's iconic Grand Central Terminal.

4. Most Miles and Longest Time On A Static Bike

George E. Hood of Naperville, Illinois spent 177 hours 45 minutes on a stationary bike at the Fry Family YMCA to pedal a total of 2616.35 miles. The previous marathon static cycling record broken was 175 hours 50 minutes. And you thought sitting on your trainer for 2 hours was an achievement. Take a look at the video of this achievement here on CNN iReport.

5. Farthest Distance Static Cycling In One Minute

The furthest distance static cycling in one minute is 2,040 metres (1.27 miles) and was achieved by Miguel Angel Castro (Spain), in Villa de Arafo, Tenerife, Spain, on 26 August 2009. Check out the record breaking video below.

6. Longest Bicycle Design

The longest true bicycle, i,e one with only two wheels and no stabilizers, was 28.1 m (92 ft 2 in) long and was built by members of Gezelschap Leeghwater, the mechanical engineering students' association at Delft University of Technology. The bicycle was ridden for a distance in excess of 100 m (328 ft) at Delft, The Netherlands, on December 11, 2002.

7. Deepest Cycling Underwater

The deepest cycling underwater is 66.5 meters (214 feet, 10 inches) and was achieved by Vittorio Innocente in Santa Margherita Ligure, Liguria, Italy, on July 21, 2008.

8. Heaviest Weight Pulled With Eye Sockets

The heaviest weight pulled with the eye sockets is 411.65 kilograms (907 pounds) and was achieved by The Space Cowboy, aka Chayne Hultgren of Australia, on the set of "Lo Show Dei Record" in Milan, Italy, on April 25, 2009. Apparently, all the weight was on a bicycle! Or were there three wheels to it?

9. Greatest Distance Cycled In 24 Hours (unpaced)

The greatest distance cycled solo and unpaced in 24 hours is 890.2 km (553.14 miles) and was achieved by Marko Baloh of Slovenia at Lenart, Slovenia, on Sept. 6-7, 2008.

10. Longest Distance On A Unicycle In 24 Hours

Sam Wakeling covered 453.6 kilometers (281.85 miles) on a unicycle in a 24-hour period at Aberystwyth, Wales, United Kingdom, from Sept. 29-30, 2007. Okay, a unicycle may not be a bicycle but this is still worthy of mention.

And How About Cycling Backwards Across The United States!

Numerous other remarkable human feats on bicycles have been achieved. Some of them have gone on without being recognized by Guinness. For example, I want you to see the following which may strike you as absolutely bizarre, maybe even impossible.

Curan Wright, a 38 year old man from California has been riding his bicycle backwards from 2007. His 20 inch bicycle is specially designed to ride backwards.

His aim is to cover the entire U.S, coast to coast, to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, homelessness and hmm...the medicinal use of marijuana. He's already covered 5300 miles riding backwards and still hasn't finished this project.

Take a look at this news video from News 3 @ WSAV :

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

The Guinness Book Of World Records Official Website
Curan Wright's Website, "Riding Backwards"
World Records For Backwards Cycling

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Design Case Study : Pedal Powered Canyon Transporter

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:50:00 +0000

I appreciate projects that are simple, can actually be made using novel technologies and which really work well for the task at hand. Among them are those that try and see if pedal power can be applied in any fashion to solving practical problems, however outrageous they maybe. And there should be solid reasons behind choosing pedal power.

Now PlasmaCAM Cutting Systems is a Colorado based company that markets an automated CNC cutter. This is a robotic cutting tool which is touted as being more versatile and more accurate than a plasma torch, achieving metal cutting accuracies as high as plus or minus five thousandths of an inch.

If you'll look, one PlasmaCAM project highlighted on their website is an interesting cable car, but a pedal powered one at that! The machine was made in the backyard of Colorado inventor Jason Bailey. All the parts that go into this "bike" was cut using PlasmaCAM in a few hours, which makes this a great application case study for the company.

Jason's dream was to make a cable car that could cross a 100 foot high cliff to the other side across the wide canyon. The design problem was being able to make a very simple and quiet machine for a flat crossing which would be powered by two people and could run in either direction. Both passengers would have to have a clean sensation with surroundings while crossing instead of being provided with a traveling experience polluted by the noise from motorized transport.

Being a pilot, he knew exactly what the disgusting sensation was of being enclosed in a noisy cabin as it powered you through the air with engine power. This motivated him to adapt pedal power to the cable car. The experience would be like riding a bike down the street of your neighborhood, except your roads in this case would be simply thin air between cliffs, 125 feet high above a stream at the bottom!

The computer depiction of the design aptly named Skybike

So he began building this bike out of plasma cut plates attached to pieces of square tubing. Bearings, sprockets and other drive parts would come from an old catalog and an old bike. The seats were made from 9/16 inch-plywood that was covered with foam rubber and seat covers stapled to the plywood. The seats could be quickly pivoted for travel in the opposite direction and they would be given custom made seat belts with aerospace quality buckles. The pedal position would also be adjustable.

Now the most important part.

Knowing that he would have a live car weight of 500 pounds, Bailey's math led him to use a 450 long, 250 pound stainless steel cable of 1/2 inch diameter. A hydraulic tensioner was used to test the cable at 22,000 pounds before each use. A portable air-compressor powered rock drill was used to dig deep into the rock, as far as 5 feet! Then, multiple expanding anchors were used to tie the cable into the bedrock. Finally, tripod supports were built out of 2-inch by 3/16-inch-thick square tubing to take as much as 5000 pounds of down force at the peak cable tension during testing. The cable pulleys would be located on these supports at what would be a perfect resting height for the bike on the cliff.

For the operating conditions of 500 pounds live weight at a cable tension of 14,000 pounds, Jason calculated that the cable would sag 4 feet in the middle of the canyon. See source.

How he got the cable between the two ends of the cliffs is the highlight of the story. Below, he describes this strenuous feat in his own words :

"People often ask how I got the cable across the canyon. It was no small feat, as the entire cable weighs about 250 pounds. I started by rolling the entire spool down to the bottom of the canyon. Next I lowered a 150-foot climbing rope down from the top of the cliff. With the bottom of the rope clamped to the end of the cable, I pulled the rope back up the cliff from the top while the cable was unwound. The last bit of cable was difficult to pull up because it became so heavy. I was barely able to get the end of it wrapped around a tree and clamped.

I dragged the other end of the cable back up the slope while the cable was untangled. I wrapped it around a tree at the top and clamped it as well. I used a hand-cable-winch and many pairs of locking pliers to gradually reel in more of the cable to the trees I was using at both sides of the canyon. I attached the climbing rope to the middle of the cable so I could work it up through the trees as it raised. This proved difficult, because the cable got caught in so many tree branches. One tree was especially large and stood right in the final path of where the cable needed to go. With the ends of the cable merely wrapped around trees, I actually rode the skybike out to the big tree and sawed the top of it off, about 100 feet off the ground."

Check out his full, amazing design report here which contains all the specifics of this project. He writes in the end that the skybike has become a popular local attraction, and people from all over the country have stopped by just to experience an exciting ride. It looks pretty breathtaking from the video below. If only I would have a chance to ride it...

ADDITIONAL READING AND RESOURCES :

Design Case Study : Pedal Powered Hotdog Launcher Design
Design Case Study : Cherry Bomb Mountain Bike
Design Case Study : Innovation Of The Brompton Bicycle
Design Case Study : iBike Power Meter
Inventor Jason Bailey builds the Skybike
PlasmaCAM

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The Optics Of Bicycle Reflectors

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:13:00 +0000

The humble bicycle reflector works on the principle of corner cube retro-reflection. Incident light bounces off the orthogonally placed, reflective plastic surfaces and emerges in the opposite direction, parallel to the incident ray. Its totally and internally reflected. I have shown this for you in the following image. Additionally, you can play around with this cool applet from a Taiwanese education website to simulate corner reflection.

I call it humble because it is cheap and sustainable. Think about it. You hardly need an external power source to make this thing work. As long its clean and there is a good source of light shining on it directly behind, it signals back its presence faithfully. And if you have three wide paneled reflectors, you can extend the range of the light horizontally.

Courtesy : John S. Allen

This simple concept was so beautiful to scientists that an array of 100 of these corner cubes were left on the moon as part of the Apollo Moon mission of 1969. The idea? By shooting laser pulses from an earth based telescope, you can measure the round-trip travel time and hence the earth-moon distance to an accuracy of mere centimeters!

Most people may think all Neil Armstrong left on the moon was a U.S flag and his footprints. Not quite. In addition, there's also these corner cubes and it has served scientists with lunar laser ranging for over 35 years! If you want to learn more on lunar laser ranging, read this.

Speaking of which, I hear now they have found water on the moon's surface after the whole "bombing mission" last month. I think in a few years, the Giro d'Italia should dream bigger and hold its first stage on the moon instead of sticking to earth. Hey, there's water for aid stations!

P.S : Don't forget to catch the Leonid Meteor shower on Nov 17! I'm going to be headed out in the wee hours of Tuesday morning on my bicycle to see if I can spot any.

ADDITIONAL READING :

Bicycle Reflector Performance By John Allen

What Neil and Buzz left on the moon

Multiple Reflections From Two Plane Mirrors - Applet

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DIY Electronic Shifting Bicycle Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:29:00 +0000

Hi folks. Here's little more background behind what was shown in Part I.

Norbert Ladenburger hails from Schwäbisch Gmünd, a little town near Stuttgart at the northern foot of the Swabian Jura Mountains. By trade, he's a goldsmith and owns a small factory there. While one of his big hobbies is building full size kitplanes from America and flying his own machines, Norbert loves getting his hands dirty with bicycles.

The idea of building a DIY electronic shifting bicycle started in 2007 when his son was unemployed. So they conjured up this plan to keep them both busy with something. But then his son moved on after having found a job and he tinkered on with the project.

Norbert tells me that he built his bicycle using carbon fabric and aircraft quality epoxy at home. Obviously, since he's into building kitplanes, he used materials he already had. For the wheels, he made a negative mold from wood. He laminated a half wheel, then the other half and finally glued the left and right parts both together. He tells me that this wasn't an easy process and that there's lots of little things to talk about regarding gluing, tensioning of spokes and the final finishing process but for a basic overview on the wheels, he left it there.

A sample bike and prototype wheels. Photo credits to 'Deichradler' & Lght-bikes.de

The servo is a cheap standard model and the electronics was a kit from a servo-tester. He removed the springs from the derailleur to fit the servo in for push and pull motion. He bought both from a model shop. This site sells the servo and this site sells the electronics.

Here's a small image of what he used.

Now here's the problem. Because its a simple analog circuit, it has been difficult for him to get to steer the rear derailleur with a potentiometer as the gears must be first searched and found with the pot. The front is a double chain-ring for which the servo apparently shifts fine with a simple toggle switch. Norbert thinks a digital circuit is the solution and apparently is looking to reconstruct the setup in the rear.

There was a rumor on the WW forums that he built his setup for 50 Euros. That may be the case for the servo mechanism, couple of electric wires and switches, but the entire bike building project, he estimates, cost him around 500-1000 Euros. But as said before, he did use a lot of materials he already had from the kitplanes hobby side.

For most of us, this may take us down memory lane. Back in the early 1990's, MAVIC experimented with a servo controlled rear derailleur powered by batteries in the handlebars with the shifting relying on the motion of the jockey pulleys. But the idea didn't last long. However, some people contend that Mavic put more of their marketing attention into wheels and rims and such which ultimately diverted resources from the electronic shifting project, in the end killing it altogether. It could have been developed and refined, if not limited to what they last had before the idea collapsed.

If any of you readers have a note of insight, electronics advice or general help for Norbert, it can be noted in the comments section on this blog and he will be reading it. As and when I get more information from him, I'll update the subtler details of the project here.

* * *

Homemade Electronic Shifting Bicycle From Germany - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:32:00 +0000

Here's a toast to cheap.

Rumor has it that this German person named 'Norbert' made this rig under 50 euros (ha!). Not only did he make all the servomotor associated shifting mechanism himself, he also built the aero bike from bottom up including the wheels.

Pay close attention to this servo setup. Here are the pics, obtained from WW Forum. Credits to you guys out there.

What looks to be an 8 speed Dura Ace rear derailleur combined with a servomotor!

Norbert. One question. When will you start your cycling company? :)

Please read about how he made this setup in Part II.

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Some Probability And Statistics On The Individual Time Trial

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:01:00 +0000

The Tour de France (TDF) is the marquee cycling event on the calender for any top international pro cyclist as well as their squads. Everyone wants to do well here because its arguably the biggest and most glamorous stage for displaying athletic talent. The competition is tough, the fans are many, the stages are epic and the prize money is fat.

In this post, I'm trying to figure out what kind of a statistical distribution is seen in the finishing times from this year's prologue TT (Tour de France). I will also try to quantify the probability of getting close to the fastest time trialist in the world. Alberto Contador tried pretty darn well. How well?

Only one way to find out these things.

So here's what I did.

Step 1 : I obtained Cyclingnews.com data for the TDF Prologue TT on July 4, 2009. I obtained 180 data points corresponding to all the competing cyclists.

Step 2 : To make sense of this data clutter, I put them into Microsoft Excel 2007 and ran a descriptive statistics analysis on it. Here's what I obtained. What you're about to see is powerful.

Fig 1 : Descriptive statistical figures for the finishing times of a sample set of 180 cyclists from the Tour de France 2009.

So is my sample set taken from a normal distribution or something different? Let's try to answer that reasonably with the table above.

The mean, median and mode are very close to each other which MAY indicate its normally distributed. The average of the average deviation of each cyclist from the mean was 0.63 min or 37.8 seconds. The minimum time belonged to Fabian Cancellara, with a blitzy 19.53 mins whereas the maximum time belonged to Yauheni Hutarovich. I also have a Kurtosis and Skewness of 0.558 and -0.068 respectively.

Positive Kurtosis indicates a relatively appreciable peak which makes me suspect the distribution is leptokurtic (too tall instead of normally high). The book Using Multivariate Statistics (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996) explains that if my Kurtosis statistic is more than 2 times [sqrt(24/180)] = 0.73, the data is not normally distributed. Since 0.558 is less than 0.73, we're ok.

Negative Skewness indicates that my data is left skewed. The same book mentioned above explains that if my Skewness statistic is more than 2 times [sqrt(6/180)] = 0.365, the distribution is not normal. Since -0.068 is less than 0.365, we're ok here as well.

Step 3 : The above only gives rough indications of the type of distribution. Nothing beats setting up a visual of the spread. So I made a histogram, with a chosen bin width of 0.20 min.

Fig 2 : The histogram for the data set. Please see source of data on CyclingNews.

The graph agrees with the skewness and kurtosis statistics. The data has central tendency but is ever so slightly skewed towards the left. This is the data for the best cyclists in the world. Not really a Gaussian, but not too far away from it either. What kind of distribution it is will take more analysis and tests for goodness of fit, which I'm going to tackle some other time.

So What Does All This Mean?

Looking at the data and Fig 2, we can say that the course conditions in Monaco on that July day were such that nearly 48% of all 180 cyclists managed to get times below the average, which might mean they were pretty fit and came well prepared (or something else worked in their favor which I can't quantify). Thus, the 48th percentile is the average time, i.e 21 min and 30 seconds.

To put it in another fashion, the probability of a world class cyclist racing on this course in a time less than the average time is 0.48.

52% of the 180 performed under par, with about 8% of those 52 giving exactly average times. The probability is 0.52 that a cyclist is at average time or above it on this course.

We can also say that 72% of the 180 cyclists lie between one standard deviation on both sides of the average, 93% lie between two standard deviations about the average and 99% lie between 3 standard deviations. Pretty close to the 68-95-99 rule obeyed by normal distributions eh?

Alberto Contador Vs Fabian Cancellara As Time Trialists

Our last question is the most interesting. So if you're a top pro at the peak of your abilities, what are you chances of ever getting close to Fabian Cancellara's blitzkrieg results? Then the next question would be, how close do you want to get to 'Spartacus'? Within 2%? 3%?

Let's do 2% as a start. Within 2% is 23 seconds difference. Now that's probably the limit of what a time trialist can accept to cap the gap, so to speak!!

Let's look at what Contador obtained that day from the data. Bert raced the course 18 seconds slower than Cancellara for an amazing second place. In other words, there was a mere 1.54% time difference between the best all round cyclist in the world and the fastest time trialist in the world. Just 4 cyclists managed to come within 2% of Cancellara's time - Contador, Wiggins, Kloden and Evans. 4/180 = 0.02 = 2%.

In other words, just 2% of the 180 cyclists got a time less than or equal to 19 minutes and 55 seconds (this 2% window we're talking about).

Put in another way, this is the 2nd percentile. This is where the glory is at. And the money. And the kisses from the long legged European girls.

The probability that you're in this 23 second window from the best man on the bike is low. Just 0.022 or 1 in 45 chance. Keep in mind this is for the best in the world.

Now you know why you and I are not racing in the Tour de France. Let's just scratch our butts and cheer these beasts on.

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2009 Weblog Awards - Nominate & Vote For The Bee!

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Hey everyone. So a little about me again. I'm a mechanical engineer currently dabbling in electro-optics full-time after quitting my previous job in the petroleum industry. On the side, I survive through a rabid fascination for cycling and its many aspects, from tech and history to culture.

For the past 3-4 years, this blog has given you varied articles that many of you love and use as reference/research. Some are so controversial they are discussed on forums to the point where people trade barbs with each other. Popular posts such as Serious Cycling=Serious Legs, Power to Weight Ratio, Lore of The Victory Salute, Church Of Lance Armstrong, The Ideal Weightweenie and numerous others are staples of this blog.

Even though I'm not as HUGE as some of the other blogs people read, I will tell you one thing right away. No individual cycling blogger might come close to the variety of topics I write about in depth or the quality of links I pollinate. I say that pretty proudly unless you show me another.

In fact, the kind of readers I get stands testimony to the site's popularity and strength of content. I receive periodic attention from MIT Engineering and Design, U of Delft, Cornell, and various other American universities who use my blog to even engage students in the classroom.

Bikers who work with Lockheed Martin and the Boeing Company have conversed with me in the past. Two big cycling companies approached me soliciting employment offers after the blog, safe to say, impressed them. Not to exclude, authors of best-selling cycling books and inventors of cycling products are also in this company of readers. The average time spent by a reader is about 3 mins and 6 seconds. Now I consider that PLENTY for the fast paced, attention deficit disorderly world we live in today.

For the folks among you who aren't so technical minded, I write quite a number of general articles and share my perspectives, both on the serious and the funny side of things. I make great efforts to make articles readable by all, regardless of nationality. In fact, over the past one year, I have been attracting lots of readers from South America, India and China who share an equal love for cycling but may not be very talented at the English language. I'm pretty sensitive to that issue. I think English by far is the hardest language to master. Anyone disagree?

While content is free to all, I haven't always felt that I'm not doing a thankless job (I'm human afterall). Now you can get to show your annual appreciation by nominating and voting for Cozy Beehive towards the 2009 Weblog Awards. Turns out, there's no prize money or medals offered, but the recognition will go a long way. Last year, I was a finalist in the category of Best Sport Blog but didn't go any further as the competition was just too stiff out there.

All relevant details on how to nominate and vote can be found on the Weblog awards website. See Nominations FAQ and the list of nominations page where you may vote for my blog against what you feel I deserve! See you all there!

Meanwhile, any of you who are serious about blogging and pay attention to content must join the party too!! Ok ok, I'll cut out the sales pitch now.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

CompetitiveCyclist.Com : Cozy Beehive Blog Review (Top 2)
2009 Weblog Awards Voting Page - Nominations Master List

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Battling The Tour de Off-Season

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 05:35:00 +0000

Cattaraugus, NY

For many here in the northeast of the U.S, crusty golden leaves have begun to fall, signaling the time of the year when we must take give our a nuts a break off the bicycle saddle and gather other edible nuts for winter.

We are to find out our losses in upper body strength and try to "cross-sport", which must be like "cross-dress" to those 50-50 human beings, you know...to find out what the other exciting side of the grass is like.

After emptying the family budget throughout the year buying bicycles, racing bicycles and driving huge vehicles to buy them and then hauling them around like a Bedouin to race them all over the place, we are going to try new things, lust after new gear, and bring the family budget to negative on the number line.

We're going to spend night in and night out of Ebay worse than a prostitute in a red light district of Bangkok, bidding on this crankset and those wheelsets and that headset because our well, our headset up there on the shoulder is a little out of torque, we're not satisfied with what we have and think we could be faster with the fancy colored ceramic bearings originally designed for machines that churn out raw materials for society in excess of 20,000 rpm. Nope, we must have it.

Not to mention, such night sessions of Ebaying will take a toll on us as we gain weight each day by the pound.

Sometime later, we'll start the "training" again and buy loads of cycling books to read because turns out, none of us know zilch about mambo-jumbo like periodization and TSS and FTP and BSS and all that BS.

When the training kicks in, it comes in myriad forms like wind trainers and rollers and fancy virtual reality and scandalous indoor spinning classes. For those of us who can't afford any of the above, we'll just pretend to spin a high gear in the bathroom while showering and then do calf raises after that, and somehow get the impression those legs will get big in the hot water over a couple of months. You know, the air-cycling version of air-guitaring.

Oh and must I say, half the training mentioned above will be consumed in trying to get rid of the weight we put on in winter. The other half lands us precisely to the fitness level we started out last year. And then we walk proud and upright with an S-curve in the back thinking we are stronger cyclists. Note : This is not applicable to those of who air-cycled in the bathroom as most of them will slip and fall on their bottoms in soapy water anyway.

The final stage of this Tour de off-season comes when renewing races licenses and buying extra licenses and so on, just in case one got lost, voila, not to fear here's another one in my organizer. Cat 1, cat 2, cat 3...what's that mate...is that a part of the cat family? Do they snarl?

When all is said and done, its a great off-season and its the journey that matters, yeah?

By the way, why the heck do they even call it off-season? There's nothing off about this silly affair.

* * *

Happy Halloween and yes, have a great....off season !!!

A Word On Bicycles And Radios

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:27:00 +0000

Think back to a great speech, an interesting musical composition or an experience of going through a historical event live and chances are, you probably heard a good portion of them on the radio.

Riding a bicycle and going places also instills deep memories. In developing nations, kids ride bikes to school. Men make money through bicycles. Entire families are seen transporting themselves from village to town and vice versa. For most of us, we remember routes and places better when we take a trip there by bike.

One could argue that both the radio and the bicycle completely changed human society, and the way we live today. They are metaphors for social progress. The bicycle has offered a cheap means of transport for millions of people across the world for over a century. It increased personal freedom, elevated personal health and has had pivotal roles to play in the emancipation of women.

And without the radio and closely related wireless technologies, perhaps the Allies wouldn't have even ended either of the World Wars. I mean, there's nothing more gripping and nervous than the threat of war, I'm sure we can all agree to that. So imagine conducting battles, moving tens of millions of people and resources across nations, directing complex artillery to places you cannot even see and making concerted decisions relevant to governance, information and security via horses, mail coaches and pigeons.

The radio has been a cheap information source. We don't have to know what's in it. There's a fantastic level of abstraction to this technology. The package is great! And through the ether or whatever that stuff is up there, it brings us music, tidings, propaganda and sports broadcasts. All we have to do is sit somewhere and turn the knob to the right places. Then shut up and listen. Its simple and beautiful.

The bicycle takes a day or two to learn. Okay, at most 10 days, maybe a fortnight. But the thrill of finally getting to ride one must far overwhelm the initial effort. Once on a bicycle, the rider is in tune to everything around them - the breeze to the face, the direction of the wind, the inclinations of pathways, the people and the surroundings, the quality of the air, the temperature gradients, the sounds on the bicycle. Its a self discovery. Its a discovery of the environment. Its a discovery of mechanisms and how they work.

Should bicycling be like using the radio? Yes, of course. It should be easy to use. So easy, a caveman could do it, that sort of thing. It should be like the radio as an instrument that helps tune personal development, giving the owner great education, memories and pleasure. Riding a bicycle should have an imaginative component, like listening to a radio. It should be a tool promoting shared experiences. Hundreds of people can listen to one great radio broadcast and enjoy it. Hundreds of bicyclists can ride the same beautiful countryside on the same bicycles and enjoy its lush offerings. Why, that concept has been enjoyed by many people for many years.

Should the bicycle be as complex as the radio? The radio is complex and its there for a reason. But the complexity is hidden through abstraction. All we see is the outer case and a couple of knobs. But if something goes wrong with it, we have to sit and RTFM - Read The Fine Manual. If its necessary, you must take it to a specialized individual to have it fixed.

Is it necessary to pollute the bicycle with unneeded complexity? I guess it depends how you think about that. Here's what I feel. Not considering bicycles used purely for specialized hobbies, the common bikes that people ride for transport and living must be kept simple to a large degree. Most normal people equate happiness with simplicity. It must feel great to have a tool that's easy to use and is easy to figure out what's wrong if something does go wrong. And how nice it would be to have one that you can use and carry around with you in many places, akin to the mobility offered by the simple radio.

Enjoy this video from Rwanda,. As we can see, there must be something deeply existential in fitting a radio to a bicycle. Can you relate to this special joy?

* * *

Velo Taboo : Underwear Inside Shorts

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:08:00 +0000

Attention Cycling Noob,

Just where do you think you're going?? Are you wearing underwear, knickers, lingerie and ofter hardware under your cycling shorts?? If yes, just imagine someone plugged out a huge 8ft stop sign from the ground with utmost urgency and stuck it in your face while an elephant provides the mother of all trumpeting!

Wearing underwear under padded cycling shorts is like riding with your shorts full of broken glass. I mean, imagine someone exploded a Schott glass with dynamite and then slipped the remains from a laboratory funnel right into your shorts. Happy trails!

And we did not even get to the most important part YET.

If you've got cheesy flowers, Mickey Mouse and other nonsense on the underclothing, they'll show through your colored Lycra shorts which will obviously knock the person drafting behind you out of consciousness. Which will then knock the others behind them out of line and others behind them out of their lines... and so on and so forth, until you're all done with a wonderful zero mile ride and all you've done all day is collecting loose pieces of skin from the road to piece yourself together.

Oh..alright...maybe if you're the type of bloke who likes to shoot for a Nobel Peace Prize in microbiology, we might be able to understand why the multitude of fungal infections harvested from the bulbous boils around your nether regions are of any immediate use to you.

So unless you're the above, or you're pulling off a gimmick as an underwear salesman or just someone really bent on publicly exhibiting the variety in the underwear drawer, please oblige and do us all a favor.

While you're changing in the restroom, we'll be having a long talk with your mom.

ADDITIONAL READING :

ShamWow Shammies

* * *

Saturday Stupidity VII

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

FOR PREVIOUS INSTALLMENTS OF STUPIDITY, SEE :

Saturday Stupidity I
Saturday Stupidity II
Saturday Stupidity III
Saturday Stupidity IV
Saturday Stupidity V
Saturday Stupidity VI
Saturday Stupidity VII

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E-Hub Marketing : A Important Lesson In Statistics

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Like the past 100 years, even today cycling products come and go. And with them, so do their marketing sound bytes...

Any intelligent cyclist must carefully inspect marketing data handed to him, and question what is missing and why its missing. Weak data can lead to weak correlations, spurious percentage differences and other logical fallacies. Until the missing numbers are accounted for, I don't advise anyone to take faith in where they put their money.

When James posted a small article yesterday on the E-Hub at the Bicycle Design blog, I got very amused and decided to take a peek at the product website. I spent a little time looking at the interesting item proudly displayed but then had an itching desire to see the numbers behind the invention. Not just plain numbers. I wanted to see if they're meaningful numbers.

This page has a statement from Dr. Alen Orbanić (a University mathematician from Slovenia) telling us that the designers behind the innovation carried out a surefire experiment to prove without doubt that using the E-hub for cycling showed the following things :

1) Increased average power output when compared to cycling with a conventional rear hub.

2) 4% reduction in average and maximal heart rates in cyclists using this product, when compared to the same figure for cycling with conventional hub.

3) 10-15% of blood lactate reduction using the E-hub versus using a conventional hub.

So What Was The Experiment?

Well, I'll tell you the part of it they conducted outdoors. They brought together a population of cyclists from 20-60 years of age. How many? Not specified. Then they categorized them as "Professionals", "Recreational" and "Amateurs". How did they define who belonged where? No indication. What were their weights, fitness levels etc? No indication.

So this population of cyclists were asked to fit themselves with a Polar heart rate measuring system who then mounted Ergomo powermeter fitted MTBs to ride a 2km track (1.24 miles) with 14 degrees of average inclination. Apparently, they did this twice, one with the E-hub and one with a classic hub after 24 hours of rest between the two. Levels of lactic acid were measured twice, immediately after each run with a hub.

Fig 1 : A snippet showing how things were measured by the authors. Typos abound. Click to zoom.

I'm surprised a tad bit by two things. 14 degrees of average inclination? Wow. That is an average of 25% grade. Second, I'm surprised recreational cyclists could manage this effort. Either Slovenian humans are exceptional, or the drive train was really dumbed down for spinning, or something is just plain wrong with this number presented to us. I have written in the past about the W/lb required to maintain a certain speed on a given grade.

So What Does The Data Look Like?

The authors go on to claim they gathered a "vast quantity of data" but for the sake of the reader's reading convenience, they picked 3 'random' data points corresponding to 3 cyclists, for each class of cyclist. I guess this is a solid example of where you can't really thank people for their kindness :).

Here are the numbers :

Fig 2 : 3 randomly selected cyclists in each class showed the above numbers with and without an e-hub. And how were they randomly chosen? No indication so could we not say this is an example of data mining?

Fig 3 : % differences in heart rate and power between the two hubs.

Fig 4 : % differences in average blood lactate between the two hubs.

Right off the bat, I see this is poorly presented data, at least for a professional level. From the surface, I can come up with 3 weaknesses :

1. Sample Points & Averages : There's a rule of thumb in good statistics. You need a minimum of 30 sample points before you do descriptive analysis on it to explain trends.

Take a look at the amount of power these cyclists are producing on this so-called 25% grade, 1.2 mile track. Professionals are producing puny average power outputs while recreational and amateurs are easily rivaling them, not only in power but also in speed.

This leads me to question firstly how the authors classified and defined these cyclists. It seems to me from this meager amount of data that all three classes were almost equal in their cycling abilities?

I also have to say that averages can fool you if data jumps all around the place wildly. For the meager sample points presented above, you can see that the average power is pretty sensitive to outliers.

Infact, if we had been handed 30 sample points or more for each class of cyclist, it is likely the data could have shown a decreased average power, which could have reduced the resultant power differences between the E-Hub and the classic hub. Any guarantee that's not the case? The authors haven't proven it here but go on to artificially bump up the averages using just 3 data points mined from here and there. Furthermore, their conclusions about the apparent efficiency increase with the E-Hub is only relevant for these 3 sample points.

2. Spread : Closely following the absence of more samples is the question, what's the spread and deviation of this "vast amount" of data? I don't have any idea of it as there's no indication of standard deviation. The data is meaningless. How can I tell if a majority of data points in this experiment are close to the average power output or not? What if outliers are pushing the average up?

3. Range : Because only one sample data point (for power, HR and lactic acid) have been presented to us going across for each cyclist, we have no idea of the true range, or the true maximum and minimum values that would be observed. The data point presented to us is just one of what could be many and they are all bound to vary, because that's how all processes are... they vary! Hence, the range could vary pretty significantly if we had more tests on the same individual.

4. Instrument & Measurement Error : Lastly, what about the instruments used? Were they calibrated properly and accurate to other power measurement systems? What's the bias in the system, if any? Are these numbers from just random variability or regression to the mean? It is often taken for granted by some that measurement systems (instrument+human operator) that produce such outstanding numbers are always pin-point accurate.

I simply have to conclude that this data, so far, to me is just meaningless. The rest of the data that follows on the webpage, done on an indoor ergometer, suffers from exactly the same types of weaknesses I have mentioned. These are basic rules to follow in statistics and I'm surprised they weren't in this case.

The product itself may be great. I cannot disagree for certain there. But the numbers don't show me much so far. Thus, I think the declaration that this hub system really improves the efficiency of a cyclist compared to what we usually use must be taken with a handful of salt.

* * *

Edge Composite 68 Carbon Wheel Failure

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Our protagonist, the author of a blog called "Manley Man", had recently participated in Levi Leipheimer's GrandFondo ride in California. Among the highlights of this ride are really steep descents, some of which feature blind corners.

One of these, called Meyer's Grade Road, was an 18% grade technical downhill and the Manley Man was being pretty cautious going down this road, hitting his brakes every now and then (okay, 'every now and then' maybe a huge assumption from my side). Yet, towards the bottom of the descent, he found things out the hard way. Observations were described thus :

"Toward the bottom third of this descent I felt a very bad pulsation in the front brake lever. I looked down at the front wheel to see if there was something wrong but there wasn't anything visibly bad. But it was scary to see the fork flexing back and forth under braking; it probably was oscillating at least an inch when I had the front brake applied heavily.

I got to the bottom of the descent and my teammate pulled over a few seconds later to see how I was doing. I spun the front wheel and it got stuck. It wasn't clear to me what happened. I opened the brakes up to let the wheel spin more freely. At this point I saw the issue. Initially it looked like the sidewall of my Rubino Pro had bulged out and was rubbing the break pads (yellow Swiss Stop). But to my surprise it actually was a deformity of the braking area of the rim! I had somehow managed to melt the carbon!"

Here's the deformed wheel, picture courtesy of Manley. The original specs of this clincher can be found on the product page. Because its a clincher wheel, the carbon braking track has to withstand the pressure inside the tire.

Manley Man limped through the rest of Levi's ride, being able to use what he estimated as only 10% of his total front braking power. He says that he'll be on the phone with Edge Composites having a long talk with them.

This kind of scenario has been a common topic of discussion on this blog and forums. If you'd like to get a little deeper into rim heating during braking, please see this past article. You may also notice that these kind of incidents happen not only with amateurs, but also professionals on the international stage. See this article.

Now we're all really really wondering what Edge Composites told the owner of the wheel. Will they have it replaced under warranty or pass on the blame to him with no gifts? Manley?

Do you want to discuss the specific nature of this failure? Please include your comments below.

ADDITIONAL READING :

Clincher Failure On Meyers Grade
Rim Heating During Hard Braking
Tubulars Exploding And Peeling Off
Bizarre H Plus Son Rim Failure In Japan

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Analysis Of The Bicycle Endo

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:02:00 +0000

The endo, short for end-over or end-over-end, is a type of pitch over crash where the cyclist goes over the handlebars, the weight offset of which causes an inertial moment to act about the front wheel resulting in rear portion of the bicycle to flip in the air above and behind him.

Usually, the cyclist, as a sudden reflex action, yanks out their hands or legs at some point to cushion the impending fall and ends up letting go of handlebar control. Meanwhile, the bicycle is bound to fall either sideways, due to its motion about the steering axis or right on top of the cyclist. In the latter scenario, the saddle or even the rear wheel itself could land on the cyclist's body.

Again, an endo is a crash that could cause injury. It is not a bicycle trick. That one has another name. Its called a 'stoppie' or a 'wheelie'. An endo is caused due to strong front wheel braking or when the bicycle hits a curb, a structure more rigid than the wheel itself. Endos may also occur if the front wheel is loose, i.e, if it is not secured properly to the fork dropouts by the quick release skewers.

In this post, we will cover the "endo parameter", study the relationship between braking force and endo parameter on level ground, outline some common reasons for endos, check out a video analysis of an endo and finally study the relationship between gradient of the road and endo parameter through a literature source.

ENDO PARAMETER

Braking a bicycle naturally upsets equilibrium and transfers weight to the front wheel. With a stark increase in the overall braking force, the load on the rear wheel approaches zero, after which the rear wheel will start to lift off the ground. Hard braking may stop the bicycle but Newton's first law reigns supreme as the cyclist's body continues in motion in the headed direction. This rider motion has some momentum. If not self-controlled, the rider will flip over the handlebars and the bicycle will pitch-over as well. What results is the endo.

It turns out that while outrageous situations cannot be helped, some factor of safety from bicycle design and rider positioning skill can provide for a cushion against pitch-over tendency in the above mentioned situations.

I'll call my main parameter of interest the pitch-over parameter (or endo parameter for lack of a better word) - A/H - as can be seen in the diagram below :

Fig 1 : Free Body diagram of a bicycle-rider system just at pitch-over. Now you may be able to appreciate from geometry and c.o.g as to why recumbents and tandems are stable in pitch-over. O is the point signifying the contact point of the front wheel with the ground.

TERMS :

W = combined rider-bicycle weight
Wf = normal load on front wheel
Wr = normal load on rear wheel
Ff = braking force at front wheel
Fr = braking force at rear wheel
Fb = braking reaction (mass times deceleration)
L = wheelbase
A = location of center of gravity (c.o.g) aft of front wheel
B = location of c.o.g forward of rear wheel
H = height of c.o.g

The endo parameter, A/H (a ratio), in the combined bicycle-rider system should be large enough to avoid front pitch-over. Obviously the vertical height, H, of the center of gravity (c.o.g) and the location of the c.o.g aft of the front wheel, A, are going to vary with variation in rider's weight, height and sitting position.

This highlights why its important to get a proper bike fit for the type of bicycle you wish to ride. Its not just a question about comfort. Its also a question about safety. Enlarged riders who overwhelm miniature bikes not made for their size will quickly find out what they're doing wrong. All they have to do is hit the front brakes hard and they're right on target to be turned into human projectiles.

Looking at the free body diagram above, we can deduce that the system is in static equilibrium about the front wheel contact point O if the sum of the moments due to all forces about that point is zero. In other words, rotation is just initiated at :

Fig 2 : Endo parameter relationship to braking force. This also gives us an expression for the braking force at the point of the pitch-over.

From this simple relation for level ground, we see that endo parameter is equal to the braking force as a percentage of total weight at just about the initiation of the endo. Braking force is a function of the co-efficient of friction at the tire-road interface.

Before the initiation of pitch-over, the braking force-weight ratio is lesser than the endo parameter. Well after the pitch-over has been initiated, the endo parameter falls lesser than the braking force-weight ratio.

We can now infer that making A/H larger is better for safety. Otherwise, a lesser braking force relative to total weight will be sufficient to initiate pitch-over. How? Simply because the braking force-weight ratio catches up with the endo parameter sooner. Oops.

A/H can be fixed to be greater with good bicycle design and proper fit. It can also be superficially made larger by the cyclist while riding by positioning his body rearward (relative to bottom bracket) as the following picture shows :

Fig 3 : A cyclist ducks and shifts his c.o.g rearward to increase his endo parameter

People succumb to pitch-overs because of other factors too. They may not be skilled enough to increase the endo factor, A/H. They also may not be skilled enough to modulate and may tend to hitting the front brakes really hard without realizing that a front brake can cause more deceleration than a rear brake. For comparison, front brakes generate upto 0.5g's of retarding force whereas rear brakes produce a max of 0.1 or 0.2g's. Note that maximum deceleration is limited by the co-efficient of friction between tire and road and the normal load.

You can notice front braking power for some mountain bikes through a speed vs time graph.

Fig 4 : Speed vs Time graphs of MTB's (Courtesy : Beck Forensics)

Obviously, the graphs show that you can bring a bike to a stop faster using the front brakes alone than the rear brakes. Using both brakes is even better for reducing stopping distance even further.

SEQUENCE OF MOTIONS IN AN ENDO

Beck Forensics did an interesting little video analysis of an endo. The following image as well as the snippet below it is taken from a web sampler of their book Bicycle Collision Investigation. It shows the steps involved in an endo before the crash.

A mountain bicyclist traveling at about 22.5 mph (36.2 kph) applies only the front brake. Once the front wheel is nearly locked, the rear wheel starts to lift up. At about 0.20 seconds, the rider really has no chance to recover. At about 0.33 seconds, he releases the brake and prepares his right hand, and then his left hand for landing. The cones are shaped in 25 foot (7.6 m) intervals and the grade is about -2% (descent). (Courtesy : Beck Forensics)

RELATIONSHIP WITH PERCENTAGE GRADIENT OF GROUND

This section is a little more involved. It uses the same analysis techniques shown above to derive a relationship between the "endo parameter" and braking force-weight ratio with the percentage gradient of the ground. You will see that the chances of an endo are more likely on a descent.

The following literature is from one digest of IHPVA (2001), written by a retired engineer named Frederick Matteson. Click on the series of images to zoom the text. Alternatively, you can also read the paper here.

Enjoy!

Page 1 : Click to zoom

Page 2 : Click to zoom

Page 3 : Click to zoom

ADDITIONAL READING :

Budbrake : Proportional Brake Control For Safer Bike Stops
Dynamic Stability Of Bicycle Design : Part 1
Dynamic Stability Of Bicycle Design : Part 2
Dynamic Stability Of Bicycle Design : Part 3
Dynamic Stability Of Bicycle Design : Part 4

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Pedal Force Simulator : Capturing The Outdoor Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

Components of Pedal Force Simulator

Tom Compton, the personality behind AnalyticCycling.com, believes trainers do a shabby job of simulating outdoor riding conditions. There's that something missing in them.

Well, nothing new there, as most of us have felt the same since time immemorial. We all sit on these mechanisms and fool our brains into thinking we're doing the actual thing.

But what I like is that Compton expresses this "something missing" of trainers relevantly as follows. This collection of statements puts together an obvious problem in need of an engineered solution :

"Acceleration is the root cause of the difference (between actually riding outdoors on bicycles and indoors on trainers). Trainers model average power at constant speed and don't respond realistically to accelerations. So when you get up to sprint on a trainer, the pedal 'falls out from under you'. The acceleration of a trainer is wrong, wrong by as much as several orders of magnitude. After all, the mass of even a large-flywheel trainer is small compared to the mass of a rider."

Compton is now taking trainers one step forward with a cool add-on simulator that mimics real world riding conditions indoors.

How do you simulate real world conditions? It turns out that its all in the resistance force encountered at the pedals. Compton has designed a one package solution, called Pedal Force Simulator (PFS), through which riders can select a pre-programmed force simulator in a Palm device mounted on the handlebars. The simulation model is then communicated wireless to a computer at the rear wheel which then controls the pedaling resistance at about 1000 times per second.

The resistance computer of the PFS at the rear wheel

The PFS uses the standard validated model of forces acting on a rider to simulate instantaneous forces at the pedal. It measures acceleration and, using the standard model of forces acting on the rider and applies a resistive force at the pedals that is theoretically equal to the force a rider would feel riding outdoors under the simulated conditions (or theoretically sound). It does this using an eddy current brake that is electronically controlled by a computer in the resistance unit. The computer recalculates force at the pedals 1000 times per second so that the instantaneous force a rider feels at the pedal is always a theoretically correct force. [Source : Tom Compton]

Fig 2 : The display on the handlebars is a high-end Palm device with a large, color display area. Display software takes full advantage of the Palm device's capabilities. Displays and plots of parameters are provided. Workout data is saved to a sophisticated database. All measurement parameters normally expected are also provided. [Source]

The power of this system comes in customization and as said before, in mimicking outdoor variables. While there are pre-programmed courses in the simulator, a rider can also setup any ride profile he desires into the computer. Moreover, the PFS takes wind speed and direction as selected by the rider and transforms it in a way that gives realistic outdoor increases and decreases in wind speed which translates to a more realistic "windy" riding experience. As the wind is varied during the ride based on the model, the rider may feel necessary to shift into easier gears to pedal, just like in the real world.

After having built complete prototypes, all true and tested, Compton is now offering licensing of the technology.

In short, what is claimed by Compton is that the Pedal Force Simulator gets the instantaneous acceleration right. This affects the rider's ability to put power into the pedals and hence, captures real and subtle effects that one will never obtain on a trainer.

Thoughts and comments?

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The AssBLEND® Bicycle Saddle

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:49:00 +0000

Apologetic Design Technologies
Gentle Avenue, Koala Bear 73232

Dear Customer,

Congratulations. You've made the right decision in purchasing our newly designed bike saddle, the AssBLEND®.

We at Apologetic have heard your needs and bring you a product that meshes perfectly with your ass like a fine fitting coat, better than any other saddle on the market. Do away with ass hatchets that leave you with a feeling of being violated by a leathered cantilever.

To ensure you have the best experience with AssBLEND®, we will guide you through your first baby steps with it :

1. When you first bought the AssBLEND®, you should have obtained a big airtight box with the name AssBLEND® printed on it in shining gold. If this is not present, you have not bought our product and we suspect its a Chinese knockoff.

2. When you open our big airtight box in anticipation using the tabs on the side, you will find a lump of material in it about 3 inches in diameter sitting in one corner. It has a blueish tint to it and may seem like a moon rock. At the other corner, there should be a steel spatula. Right in the dead center, you should have been able to find this instruction sheet you read now, neatly folded and kept awaiting the grace of your eyes.

3. Where the bloody hell is the saddle, you'd snap impatiently. Ah. We expected exactly this question from our research. Patience now. Continue to step 4.

4. The blue lump/ball is pliable. Take it in your hand carefully. Feel the ball slowly. It is soft to touch. Yes feel it more. Ok, that's enough now...

5. This ball is a result of 5 years of research and design in our chemical laboratories at Apologetic. We have designed it in such a fine manner that it possesses a time dependent pliability for 5 min the moment it is exposed to atmospheric air at 14.5 psi.

6. Which means don't just stand there!

7. Please rush to the bathroom with the provided spatula immediately and strip off your trousers.

8. Close the toilet lid, place the ball on it at the dead center.

9. Now take a deep breath, try your best basketball jump and land right on the ball. Hold it there for exactly 20 minutes. The material is designed to work with human body temperature and hardens while expanding at the same time. While you wait, you can flip this instruction sheet in your hand for some testimonies from some of our customers. To give you comfort while you sit on the lump, we have made the testimonies (un)settling.

10. 20 minutes must have gone by now and you should feel something hard against the rear end. Take the provided spatula and scrape this hardened lump off your ass. Move onto step 11.

11. We forgot to say something in step 10. Please scrape it off carefully. That spatula is a work horse made by an artisan in South America so it can damage your ass with permanent marks if careless.

12. What you will observe on the spatula is a perfect negative of your rear end, containing an accurate description of all its crests and toughs, down to the most minutest details such as hair follicles, spores and childhood spank marks. Get your hands to work and do some additional shaping to get it into a saddle form.

One customer's sample has been provided below as reference.

Sample saddle in rough stages before processing

13. For final processing, what we call cold treatment, take any seatpost you would normally use, stick it into the AssBLEND® at the angle you desire and place into the your refrigerator.

14. After 1 hour of processing, what you should get is a rock solid copy of your ass attached to the seat post. Lock it in place on your seat tube with an allen wrench and off you go - yes, go...take your first ride with it.

Notice immediately as you ride, that every feature on your bottom melds into the AssBLEND® perfectly. What you've done is broken into the saddle with your ass in less than 2 hours. This is the AssBLEND® difference.

DISCLAIMER : Any product defect is not our liability. It's your own fault.

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The G-G Diagram Applied To Bicycle Racing

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 04:00:00 +0000

In the midst of our world of possibilities for data analysis in cycling performance, I was wondering if we could consider extending our scope a bit to other things.

As we speak, more models of GPS systems, power meters and heart rate monitors are being designed and released with are basically just different answers to the same old questions : "what's my speed", "what's my power", "what's my heart rate".

But what about other fundamental questions and problems imposed by bike racing? How could we explore and quantify those parameters?

As an illustration, one topic for discussion rarely brought to the table in our daily techno babble is that of acceleration and its impact on safety. Acceleration is an elementary concept in physics and we all know how important it can be towards team race strategies we see today in cycling. Is it getting the importance it may deserve from an analysis standpoint? I'm not sure.

The question is : Could an acceleration analysis be helpful to the racing cyclist and how?

Consider a human-bike system in an Individual Time Trial, a bike race against the clock on a circuit of predetermined length and design. Often in a race of professional caliber such as this, the standard deviation of the data set of results from the top 5 placers is mere seconds.

While time trials are usually steady power output races, if we considered a very technical race course with lots of curves and S-bends, we could say that a majority of the racer's effort is concentrated towards finding the optimum line between the bends while controlling the bike's speed through braking and acceleration. Miscalculations here could cost seconds and a possible podium spot.

Consider two racers, A and B, who chose different paths around a section of this hypothetical race course. Let's also say that they were riding bicycles of the same design, with the same handling qualities.

Fig 1 : Paths of two cyclists in a section of an ITT course. COG = center of gravity.

Who emerged faster at the right end of this section? Racer A or B?

Of course, we wouldn't know because we don't have enough information, you would say. The information missing here is that of the cyclists' acceleration.

To maintain a curved path on the ground, any vehicle, be it a bicycle or a Formula 1 race car, must be moving sideways as well as forward. Hence, there are two components to the bicycle's acceleration. They are :

1. Lateral or centripetal acceleration (LA), whose vector points towards the center of curvature of the road. A bicycle turns because of applied lateral tire forces. LA is affected by tire-road friction characteristics, angle of lean, square of the speed of the bike and radius of the curve, R. If lean is too large (i.e. rider tilts too much into the circle), centripetal force will be too much and the bike will start turning into a circle with radius smaller than R. If lean is not large enough, there won't be sufficient force to keep the bike on the circle and the bike will veer off, turning in a circle with radius larger than R.

2. Tangential or longitudinal acceleration (TA), whose vector points in the fore-aft direction of the bike rider. It is decided by pedal torque, aerodynamic drag forces, and traction limit of the tires.

If m is mass of bicycle-rider system, v its speed along the course, R the radius of curvature of the curve, t is time and g is the acceleration due to earth's gravity, then the above two are defined mathematically in terms of g-force as :

The vectors of these components and their resultant roughly look like this :

Fig 2 : The tangential and lateral vectors of acceleration represented graphically. A reversal of lateral acceleration vector (purple) signifies reversal of direction while a reversal in tangential acceleration vector (red) signified reversal of speed with time.

If we attached perpendicularly oriented accelerometers at the center of mass of the rider-bike system for the 2 riders in Fig 1 , and if we captured lateral acceleration (LA) and tangential acceleration (TA) through a data recording system, the data points when plotted on a graph could look like this (shown just for illustration, not to be taken for granted).

Fig 3 : This plot shows an example g-g diagram (a composite of friction c ircles for both wheels) for two bicycle riders on the same section of the race course on the same bicycle. It consists of a forward acceleration, turning and braking regions. Data points for each cyclist is shown in red and blue. A rough boundary envelopes these points for both riders. It must be noted that the g-g envelope/boundary for each of the cyclists is not fixed and depends on the bicycle, maximum tire friction force, human skill level and environmental conditions imposed on tire-road contact. This is the performance envelope for the bicycle-rider system. Outside this safe envelope, racing a bicycle could be dangerous.

This plot is called a g-g diagram. The concept was described extensively by aerospace engineer and race car driver Will Milliken Jr.

The difference in riding techniques of the two riders resulted in two different maneuverability boundaries, which can also be looked at as the maximum potential of the rider-bike system in any technical section of the race course for the race conditions. A given individual can only generate limited g's of acceleration to get up to speed. Theoretical limits of deceleration are on the order of 0.5g for a crouched rider on level ground before a person flies over the handlebars. If they are riding two different bicycles with different handling qualities and tires, the g-g boundaries will be different in this case too.

The ultimate limit of the g-g boundaries is imposed by the acceleration capability of the bicycle, which is primarily determined by the grip between the tire and road surface. This is represented in the g-g diagram by the outer oval shaped boundary.

When a racer sits down and studies his g-g performance, he could get a graphical picture of how he utilized the components of acceleration at specific sites on the course and how his choice of equipment may have cost him.

With appropriate software, answers could be generated to questions such as : What's the range of my accelerations? Which direction did I spend more time cornering to? Did I decelerate too much before the sharp curves? Did I accelerate optimally after the apex? How much emphasis did I place on acceleration and deceleration? Could I have changed the ratios of these accelerations by riding differently and emphasizing various body movements? How would these have affected or improved my course times at the end? What really caused my wipe out at that sharp bend and was it related to the lean angle and speed with which I faced that bend? How does all this change with a change in my bicycle tires? Or bicycle design.

How may this be specifically applied to improve performance? I have some thoughts :

1) The tire and the bicycle could be engineered to widen the g-g boundary as much as possible throughout an expected range of operating conditions (load, surface, temperature) without bringing about potentially dangerous modes of oscillatory motion.

2) The rider could train and improve his skill level to ride and exploit these maximal g-g limits of his machine.

Perhaps knowing the performance envelope of the bike being ridden for specific operating conditions may also empower the cyclist with a feeling for when he can safely take risks to win a race.

Take a look at the following two videos. One shows the capturing of the acceleration vectors on a g-g circle for a remotely controlled toy car. The one below it shows what looks to be a real time friction circle generation from a computer simulation.

Its inspiring to watch these data recording and software applications. Perhaps we could have a neat cyclocomputer in the future that could show the bicycle's g-g diagram in real time, if its practicalities have been established. Maybe cycling commentators will start talking about g-g diagrams and other cool things in future race telecasts. Who knows. What do you think?

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

The G-G Diagram
Rate Of Cycling Uphill Explained
Wild Ideas For New Cycling Products Part 1
Wild Ideas For New Cycling Products Part 2

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Cold Forging Technology At Shimano

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:25:00 +0000

If you read descriptions of Shimano's products, you'll often come across the words "cold forged aluminum", mentioned with great pride.

Forging is a metal shaping process in which a malleable metal part, known as a blank, billet or workpiece, is worked to a predetermined shape by one or more processes such as hammering, upsetting, pressing, rolling and so forth. Cold forming is a precision category of forging which does the same thing without heating of the material (room temperature), or removal of material.

Most of Shimano's products in the bike and fishing business utilize cold forming technology, which was established by the company more than four decades ago. It was in 1963 that Shimano introduced a cold forging plant to press precision parts for bicycles using dies and high pressure in order to form metal at room temperature. Plants such as these use presses, punches and dies that see very high working pressures, upto 1500 N/mm^2.

But why such specialized equipment?

The plasticity of aluminum at room temperature is low. The flow stress of aluminum decreases with increasing temperature. For alloys that are very easy to forge, such as 6061, there is nearly 50% decrease in flow stress between 700 deg F and 900 deg F.

Forgeability and forging temperatures of various aluminum alloys. Note that 810-900 deg F is the recommended forging temperature for 6061 alloy. Credits : Aluminum and Aluminum Alloys (ASM International)

Therefore, at room temperatures , because the flow stresses are higher, large machines capable of ramming and hammering the hell out of these alloys to get accurate shapes are needed. Of course, its more a delicate operation as opposed to the violence I have described above as great care has to be taken to prevent microscopic defects from developing in the cold forged piece, while it works at the upper limit of its strength.

On the other hand, because cold forging allows one to make parts without introducing the need for heat treatment and additional machining processes, it is an economical manufacturing method to produce precision, net-shape parts.

This is exactly what was needed by Shimano back in the day when it started designing integrated shift levers and gears that demanded high precision but which invariably suffered from the disadvantage of having a specialized and small market without much economy of scale. It has been mentioned that Shimano is one of the few companies in the world that can produce cold forged aluminum parts with close tolerances as those needed in the STI mechanism.

So how exactly did Shimano get around to having this precision, cost cutting technology? It turns out that the company has to thank a brilliant electrical engineer who basically re-created the entire company in the 1950's by helping it adopt the cold forging process, way before any other company in Japan at the time, even Toyota!!

Shuzo Matsumoto joined Shimano in 1954 with a dream. A graduate of the electrical engineering department of Osaka Prefecture University, he saw his mission as introducing cold forging technology to the replace hot forging then used. To achieve this goal, he was dispatched to the United States for 2.5 months by the company President, Shozaburo Shimano (died in 1958). In those days, only a limited amount of foreign currency could be taken out of Japan by any individual. Therefore, before departure, he was handed a lot of dollars obtained from the black market by Shozaburo and was simply instructed to "enjoy the trip".

The following snippet from page 76 of the book "Japan : Moving Towards A More Advanced Knowledge Economy, Vol. 2 Advanced Knowledge Creating Companies " describes briefly how Matsumoto went about accomplishing his mission of introducing cold forging technology to Shimano. Zoom in to enjoy the read. If you've anything else to share about Shimano and their production processes, give me a buzz.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES :

Cold Forging In Bolt Production : A Video From Discovery Channel's How Its Made
Shuzo Matsumoto Patent : Rear Hub With Built-In Three Speed Change Mechanism For A Bicycle

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Psychology Of Dog-Cyclist Encounters

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:34:00 +0000

The human instinct to fear when something on four legs chases you down on a pathway is natural. The speed, ferocity and the sound of animal paws smacking the ground as it tries to catch up behind us sends us scrambling for escape responses. Getting caught up in this moment to save your own butt could be all too easy.

What about the dog? Are all cyclist-dog encounters dangerous for riders? This is the interesting question for today.

I have never had very troublesome dog encounters but I did have a few close ones which I managed perfectly fine by just increasing my velocity. That response wasn't hard to gather. I find it somewhat odd when people talk about carrying sticks of dog spray and other ammunition on their backs as if preparing for some kind of surprise ambush like those between highwaymen and money wagons in western movies.

Maybe you'd have a different perspective and we can surely disagree.

In this post, we take a look at the ingredient of dog sprays and then try to understand the mind of a dog during a dog chase. We think we know animals, but we might actually be surprised by how much we don't. What's the source of the dog chase and what's the best course of action from a cyclist? Read on...

DOG SPRAY AND ITS SHU VALUE

Its become a sort of fashion these days to go with the "Point and Spray" method without a furnishing a second thought. Besides giving the user of the spray an inflated sense of security, there's probably some degree of thrill involved in knowing that you'll be spraying nasty crap into someone's eyes. I did wonder a few times whether people stop and think about what this crap really is.

Bite into a piece of hot pepper and one quickly realizes the complex reactions involved in the body to flush out this irritant heat. If that's not enough for you, try some of the interesting hot sauces out there. People make a living through marketing this stuff and gaining notoriety for the "heat in the bottle". The more, the better.

I was once offered a bloody little drop of Dave's Insanity Sauce to try as relish by a friend. Just a tiny drop about 0.5 inches in diameter on the palm of my hand.

How did it go? Well, let's say I was too saucy in my overconfidence to begin with. The moment the wretched stuff hit my tongue, my eyes started watering streams and my throat, mouth and ears felt like they were lit on fire by a propane torch. Wow. Its relieving to just say that it was something I tried, in past tense.

You'd think this is the hottest stuff around that you had in your mouth but the gurus of spice will wave you off and tell you otherwise. For perspective, inspect the table below. This gives the Scoville Rating, which is basically the piquancy spectrum, for peppers. The unit of measurement is Scoville Heat Unit or SHU for short.

The Scoville Scale of peppers. Click to zoom.

The predominant ingredient in dog spray is oleoresin capsicum (OC). Take your canister and inspect it. It might even say something like "contains capsaicin and capsaicinoids", which is true as the extracts of OC contain capsaicin. Capsaicin causes neurogenic inflammation.

The hotness of OC is directly related to the amount of capsaicin in it, which varies significantly from manufacturer to manufacturer. The more capsaicin content the OC has, the hotter and more effective the spray will be.

While Dave's Insanity Sauce has about 250,000 to 500,000 SHU's, commercial grade self-defense sprays such as dog spray, mace and pepper spray have a minimum of 2 million SHU's and beyond. That's 4 to 8 times the strength of Insanity Sauce.

Now imagine if someone who didn't like you took the same Insanity Sauce and squirted a bit in your eyes. Good luck, my friend. You may see your bum through your head.

When you spray 2 million SHU's or more on someone's face, into their nose and eyes, you bet its going to hurt real bad. Humans could easily get help and get nursed with water in the event this happens. What's a blinded dog to do in the middle of the road? I'm not sure.

PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND THE DOG CHASE

Many times I have wondered what causes a dog to chase a cyclist. What's the motivating factor for ticking a well domesticated animal, sending it scuttling behind something else it spotted on the road? What's the psychology of a dog's mind during this scenario?

I don't profess to be a dog expert. That's why I posed this troubling question to Alexandra Horowitz, a famous professor of psychology and cognitive scientist with Barnard College. She's probably one of the few in the U.S who leads a dog cognition lab which studies dog behavior.

Her recent book, Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know, describes recent discoveries of the fields of dog cognition, behavior, and biology in order to better imagine what it is like to be a dog. Just last week, her work was featured in a well written article in Time Magazine titled The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind.

Since she understands dogs better than most of us, I asked her to unravel for me the psychology behind the dog chase, from the dog's perspective. She was, in a way, the perfect person to ask because apart from being a scientist, she also happens to be a runner and recreational cyclist.

Ms. Horowitz's best explanation to me went along these lines. Consider the visual system of dogs. The visual system of canids evolved over the course of many years to notice quick movements, like fleeing prey.

As hunters, dogs and their forebears developed a very high sensitivity to motion, dogs became much quicker to notice a small motion in their peripheral vision than we are. This is adaptive for an animal which chases moving prey.

Not all dogs chase bikes, of course. But for those that do, they see the smooth, quick motion of the bike and it triggers their prey instinct to chase the "animal". In our case, the "animal" to the dog is the cyclist. The cyclist is the source of the problem.

She also pointed out to me that this isn't the same as saying dogs see cyclists or runners as "prey" because after all, they never consume you as you dismount. But they do get very excited and their nervous system just riles up for the chase.

What would her approach be as a cyclist? The best way to stop a dog is to simply stop the illusion of the prey, i.e, stop the bike. A dog may still bark and stay riled up, but does this only for a short time, as their nervous energy subsides. It may be impractical to stop if you're on a long ride, but keep in mind that the dog is just excited and can be calmed by stopping the bicycle.

Of course, this is easier said than done as this seems a counter-intuitive step for a majority of us. But since the dog psychology in dog-cyclist encounters makes sense, the response from a cyclist countering exactly that psychology may also make sense.

I also asked her if owners could train their dogs in such a way that they learn not to do what their instinct tells them to do on seeing a cyclist on the road. According to her, the training itself might be intensive, but something like this is certainly possible. A dog can be trained to notice, but not act on these cues. Unless an owner specifically trains their dog to be still when a bike comes by, it is not something dogs with this visual tendency will do on their own.

Ms. Horowitz believes, like I would also like to, that in most case scenarios, there is no pressing need to spray a dog with a canister of a million SHU's. In fact, she believes this could really up the ante and "cause" a secondary response in the animal.

Do you have a dog chase story to share? What are your thoughts on dog behavior? Please join the discussion if you know you have specific experience as a cyclist, dog owner or as researcher involved in animal behavior.

ADDITIONAL READING :

Guide To Chile Heat
Health Hazards Of Pepper Spray
Scoville Scale Chart For Hot Sauce And Hot Peppers
The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind (Time Magazine, 21 September 2009)

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Saturday Stupidity VI

noreply@blogger.com (Ron) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:57:00 +0000

Laugh the weekend away for me, will ya?....

By the way, Cozy Beehive has officially chosen the following piece as its soundtrack. Let's apply it to bicycles. I'm already dancing. Can you keep up?

FOR OTHER INSTALLMENTS, SEE :

Saturday Stupidity I
Saturday Stupidity II
Saturday Stupidity III
Saturday Stupidity IV
Saturday Stupidity V
Saturday Stupidity VI
Saturday Stupidity VII

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