aero advantage of front disk

I'm trying to decide whether a front disk wheel has any real advantage
over a carbon deep dish 16 spoke wheel (Bontrager X Lite Carbon Aero)
for a 3000 m pursuit (sub 4 minute) on an indoor track. In windless
conditions, I think most would say that the disk has an advantage. But
the question is by how much? Is it a matter of paying a big pile of
money for a 0.01 second advantage or is there more to be gained. Any
thoughts?

Steve Karpik

On 20 Jul 2005 13:51:30 -0700, "Steve Karpik"
wrote:

I'm trying to decide whether a front disk wheel has any real advantage
over a carbon deep dish 16 spoke wheel (Bontrager X Lite Carbon Aero)
for a 3000 m pursuit (sub 4 minute) on an indoor track. In windless
conditions, I think most would say that the disk has an advantage. But
the question is by how much? Is it a matter of paying a big pile of
money for a 0.01 second advantage or is there more to be gained. Any
thoughts?

Steve Karpik

Dear Steve,

This calculator may help:

http://www.analyticcycling.com/DiffE...urse_Page.html

You can play with different wheel types.

Changing the wheel types does not change the weight of the
wheels, which defaults to the right-hand wheelset being
heavier. (And different tires and tubes would make a
difference, too, at the small predicted differences.)

Changing the steady wind on the generic 1-lap course also
makes a difference--the disk wheel loses most of its
advantage with 0 wind.

Carl Fogel