All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

The most common safety risks that we come across in our daily work around bicycle safety, technology and operating instructions are also published by us in articles in the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR (Europe's road bike magazine no. 1), BIKE (Europe's mountain bike magazine no. 1), MYBIKE and EMTB in order to make this information, which is important for the industry, available to a wider public.

For many years now, the Eurobike Show Daily, trade fair magazine of the annual Eurobike Show, has also given us the opportunity to publish our view of major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent expert presentations about all areas of bicycle technology and the bicycle market. In addition, we are quoted by further special-interest magazines of the industry and the trade as well as increasingly by radio and television in their media reports, which shows us that we are spot on with our advice. The section "News" informs you about the latest news from our specialist areas. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to areas of interest.

TOUR 02/2004
Reading time 1:20 minutes

Computers on wheels

Airplanes, cars, ships - these vehicles have already been researched down to the last detail by legions of engineers and almost anything is kown about driving dynamics, maximum loads and stability. Only the road bike has remained unknown - up to now: TOUR heralds a new age of road bike real data capture.

When automobile engineers develop a new car, they nowadays already know before the first serial production what will happen to the passenger cell if the car crashes against a fixed obstacle at 50 kilometers per hour. An exakt knowledge of the material properties allow for computer simulations to be created which mirror reality almost par for par. With bikes, this is unimaginable.

The diamond frame costruction has been existing for more than 100 years indeed. But up to now, we have come to know only vaguely which forces impact on the individual components of the bike. This didn't matter when bikes still were so heavy and robust that they often outlived their owners. Today, the road bike - just like any other object of utility - is subject to trends and tendencies much more than it used to be - and an important trend is low weight. Only very few manufacturers, however, calculate before serial production, how much material is needed where in order to build a light, but nevertheless safe bike; most of them just try until the compromise between weight and qualities like stiffness and stability roughly fits. But just roughly: There are definitely far too many bikes on the road whose low frame stiffness at least irritates their riders or - worse - brings them into trouble. And there are far too many documented cases of breaking stems, handlebars and seat posts.

(...)

Author: Dirk Zedler

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