Carl Fogel wrote:
snip

Why does a carbon fork, often claimed to damp
vibration better than metal, need a layer of
metal mesh to damp vibrations?

How does including Kevlar and nickel in the
Super Muscle Fork save weight while maintaining
strength? Isn't nickel a denser and weaker metal
than the titanium used in the plain muscle fork?

good questions! nickel alloys are not necessarily weak, often quite the
reverse, but they are /cheaper/ than ti!!!

to be honest, i have a hard time filtering out any tech from the
marketing with that columbus blurb, but as i understand it, the reason
composites are good for vibration is because the fibers are embedded in
a polymer matrix. the modulus of the polymer is very low and for small
deformation amplitudes, you're riding on polymer, not high modulus graphite.

what a mesh would do is effectively provide a large volume of polymer
between high density layers of graphite fibers and therefore provide a
zone of "insulation" between different regions of the component. so,
provided that "insulation" layer of polymer can be persuaded to remain
intact at high load, and the mesh would hopefully have this effect as
well as separation, then that could be the reason. but for the
definitive answer, you'll need to ask someone with more composites
experience than i.

jb