CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
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I dont know what the answer is to this question - however I can say that my commute this morning (particularly along the broomhouse wind tunnel) toward edinburgh park was torture.
The gusts almost made me stop at some points, and I seriously thought someone must have broken into my hut and poured sand/treacle into my bottom bracket.
I can only hope the gusts keep up for the ride home !!
p.s. Today was on the heavy beat up hack MTB with mudguards, road slicks etc
In addition to the resolving mass/gyroscope theory, it seems likely that as the headwind/gusts mean slower progress, lighter wheels will make instability more noticeable(?)
Confesion time. I passed a green MTB at the Forestry Commission this morning who then sped up and tried to hitch a free ride off of me. I wasn't having any of thatso went up a gear or two and dropped him back into the gale - apologies if it was anyone on here but if I was working hard into the headwind, so was everyone else going to!
Experiment over - wind seems to have dropped!
I don't suppose anyone's ever done or heard of a scientific comparison of the impediment caused by headwinds of various speeds on the flat compared to the extra work required for forward motion on various gradients of upwards slope? Wind always seems the worded but that's probably entirely subjective due to it feeling like nothing but an impediment whereas heading upslope feels like it's achieving something.
When I put the power calculator onto the Arthur's Seat Challenge site I had to discount the effect of head or tailwinds because it was too complex. The formula without counting wind is this:
9.81*w*7.8*(1180/t)/118
where 9.81 is gravity
w is weight of bike and rider in kilograms
t is time taken in seconds
7.8/118 is the gradient
1180 is the distance in metres
and that has to be turned into JavaScript to work on the site.
There are online calculators that are much more sophisticated than that and take account of wind speed etc.
Whereas everyone's subject to the same gravitational acceleration (as long as they're in the same place) wind-drag would vary markedly from person/cycle combination to person/cycle combination. I suppose by measuring the rate of speed reduction from/at various speeds one could establish the wind-caused deceleration to which a particular rider/cycle/clothing/etc. combination is subject to at a range of speeds, though it would ignore differences in other frictions which would also vary with speed. That would be easy enough to convert to an effective equivalent to a particular gradient's rearward gravitational tug experienced for a given speed.
Wingpig, you're right about that I think. Wind resistance probably rises as the square of the speed and that resistance would have a different value based on the clothing worn and even the bike used.
To get back on topic, I think that a heavy bike with touring geometry will be easier to control in the wind. That's because the force of the wind on the rider will be less likely to cause the bike to lean turn and the force of the wind will be less able to affect the bike's higher inertia, especially the rotating inertia of the heavier wheels.
Also, heavier touringy cycles might be slim-tubed steel, presumably more likely to be able to ignore wind compared to oversized-tube aluminium.
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