Concept Bikes & Bike Innovation - for better or worse

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lae in reply to @TRA

Although when I mentioned stamped out box sections I probably should have elaborated. In my head I was thinking of fancy hydro-formed shapes with engineered flex/stiffness etc and different wall thickness at any given point. I'd assumed that's where the ductility comes into it?

Trek (I think) made a DH frame out of two halves welded together, a few years ago now. It was aluminium though.

How oversized do you want to go? you get something which has to be handled with care to avoid dents.

Well that's the beauty of greater specific strength. You can have an oversized tube with greater wall thickness for the same weight. Or the same tube geometry for less weight. Or any compromise thereof.

I'm not sure that yield strength is the limiting factor for chains... At some point, elastic extension

Uh huh, fair enough, maybe elastic deformation is a limiting factor in power transmission for sprinters, maybe yield strength and therefore weight is a limiting factor for climbers. My point was that saying 'strength is never a limiting factor' was rather glib of you, without having defined 'strength' or 'limiting factor'.

I rode one of these last season, it was great fun. Only goes downhill though.

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gbj_tester in reply to @lae

My point was that saying 'strength is never a limiting factor' was rather glib of you, without having defined 'strength' or 'limiting factor'

For almost any normal definitions of both "strength" and "limiting factor", my point substantially stands. The spokes in very low spoke count wheels are probably the closest thing we have on a bike to a piece of steel which is only just strong enough, and even there the limit seems to be that the wheel gets too flexy if we cut the total spoke cross section even further.

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