You are reading a single comment by @jontea and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
jontea
Also a good question. I'm happy to hear justification (actual engineering justification, i.e. published papers or textbooks) comparing the deflection of curved Vs straight cantilever beams. The reality is I don't know if there would be any appreciable difference in stiffness. My guess is that it's the cantilever nature of the fork that dominates the stiffness and that humans wants to perceive the curved blade as more compliant because it is literally in an exaggerated deflected shape as you look at it.
Edit: the above assumes all is equal in material stiffness and geometric cross section for straight and curved fork blades, and that the rake is relatively small.
Clarification: I'm using straight fork blades because I think they look nice, no other reasoning