ENVE aero wheels

[Ypsylon]

After this FWB blog entry ENVE have now posted an article by Pro Cycling Magazine.

All in all, to me, it looks like they did their home work, but I didn't fully understand most of the graphs. It could be me not being smart enough or too exited for decent reading comprehension, especially since I had to scroll around all the time, it could be that Procycling dumbed down the data a little too much or ENVE, just like all the others, are very careful about providing useful info while building up an image, but so far I can't tell if the legs of the dummy were moving or not and I'll need someone to explain the ENVE stability metric to me. Are sideforces pretty high, but more linear?

While it is untrue they are the first to have different rim shapes for front and rear, I for one am pretty convinced these are at least not much worse than Zipp or HED aerodynamically and if they are stiffer and lighter, which should be a little easier to find out, they would make for a really, really nice wheel.

Since at least the .45 and .65 are inferior in pretty much every aspect I can't help but wondering if those will disappear and be replaced or at least discounted, or if the new wheels will just be an addition to the line-up and more expensive.

Since they only mention weights for the complete wheelsets it will also be interesting to see if the rims will be available seperately.

[über-goober]

The 1st wheels (i know of) that were different front and rear for aerodynamics were in 1896:


And it's been at least a decade and a half since wheels designed to account for the turbulence of the rider:


These examples are more for fun than to make a point. But where are the BIG improvements for reducing drag at 0 degrees? Moser set the hour record on double discs in 1984, and Obree's 52.7km was on Tri-Spokes in '94... and those are designs still used in competition.

ENVE is now taking turns at the front w/ HED and Zipp, with most of their advances they claim in real world criteria like cross-wind stability and working across a range of yaw angles. And i think we'll see this debated a lot (my wind tunnel can beat up your wind tunnel) along w/ the bike and rider optimization stuff. But the part that's interesting is they found out their virtual testing is damn good.. wind tunnel testing only confirms what their computers told them. So the advances are more and more for the conditions out in the 'real world' .. while the ways to develop (if not validate) them are more and more 'virtual'.

And what they ultimately gained from the Smart/ Mercedes collaboration is (purportedly) the state of the art in rim profiles. I wonder about this recent thing -- patenting the cross-section of wheels. As designs are perfected will rim shapes be determined in court rooms??

zipp-firecrest2011.jpeg.jpeg (18.51 KiB) Viewed 779 times

But as far as shaking up the industry, when are we going to see cheap/ sub-1000g Madfibers or Lightweights from Taiwan or China?