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Why wooden rims are superior to carbon fibre reinforced plastic rims
As noted elsewhere, I have considerable experience in structural
reinforced plastics. As a reminder to those who think the carbon in carbon fibre is the important component, no it isn't. The important component is the epoxy, the plastic. The carbon fibre by itself is so brittle as to be useless. It is only in combination with the plastic (epoxy) that the carbon becomes useful in any engineering sense. The largest and most successful structure I designed and built was a 68ft transocean racing yacht in moulded wood or, if you will, in wood- fibre-reinforced plastic. That impressed the virtues of laminated wood indelibly on me. In a contemporary thread we hear much about the troubles carbon fiber rims are liable to. It doesn't take a genius to see that, in every possible engineering sense, a wooden rim is superior to a carbon fiber rim. Yes, I know, the wooden rim brakes badly in the wet, is a high- maintenance item, and ultimately cannot be made as light as a carbon rim. So? Do carbon rims brake well? Or, when you've made the carbon rim lighter than the wooden rim, doesn't the carbon rim instantly become a disposable item with short service life? In particular, wood is superior in its failure mode, in exactly the same way as steel is superior to other bicycle materials in its failure mode. Wood has more in common with good steel, in that when properly laminated into shape, wood is about the same strength as bicycle steel tubes, though it might be made to weigh the same as aluminium or less. But laminated wood fails as progressively as steel, not suddenly and catastrophically like carbon reinforced plastic. Wood just isn't brittle like that shiny rubbish. I'm really surprised that we don't see more wood in bicycles. There's a substantial section on engineering moving mechanisms in wood in my book DESIGNING AND BUILDING SPECIAL CARS (Batsford, London; Bentley, Boston; etc). Andre Jute Visit Jute on Bicycles at http://www.audio-talk.co.uk/fiultra/...20CYCLING.html |
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