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Rotating weight is crucial
An ounce off the wheels is worth a pound off the frame, goes the old saying, implying that rotating weight, especially on the wheels, is supremely important. The claim is sometimes laid out in less hyperbolic terms that weight on the wheels counts twice because when you accelerate you have to get it both spinning and moving forward.
Problem is, its not true. In 2001 bike engineer Kraig Willett analysed the forces on wheels (link is external) and concluded:
When evaluating wheel performance, wheel aerodynamics are the most important, distantly followed by wheel mass. Wheel inertia effects in all cases are so small that they are arguably insignificant.
The idea that rotating mass is important comes from the belief that wheel inertia matters, because its inertia that has to be overcome to accelerate a wheel. But Willett clearly demonstrates that wheel inertia doesnt matter, so rotating weight is also relatively unimportant.
Why not? Well, you don't do much accelerating when you ride a bike, and even when you do the acceleration is relatively low, so the power expended accelerating a bike with heavy wheels is only fractionally higher than that needed for light wheels. Overall weight matters when youre climbing, but even thats not as big a factor as people imagine and its a lot cheaper to save weight off your middle than the bike.
In fact you spend most of your
time, and therefore effort, shoving the air out of the way, and thats a far better basis for choosing wheels. The roughly tenfold difference in the effect of aerodynamics versus total mass means youre far better off with a pair of good aero wheels than a pair of light ones.
Narrow tyres are faster
You can see where this one comes from. In cycling, smaller things are lighter and lighter things make you go faster, right? Well, no, not for tyres. Countless measurements have demonstrated beyond doubt that rolling resistance of tyres is lower if the tyres are wider, as long as the construction carcass thickness and materials, tread rubber and depth etc is identical.
But is that the whole story? What about weight and aerodynamics?
As discussed above, weight, even rotating weight, has a much lower effect on performance than people think, so the few grams difference between 23mm and 25mm tyres is immaterial.
Were not aware of any detailed modelling of the aerodynamic effects of fatter tyres, but lets have a bit of a stab at it. Aerodynamic drag arises from an objects frontal area and its drag coefficient.
Drag coefficient depends on an objects shape and how air flows over its surface. A very aerodynamic shape such as a smooth wing might have a drag coefficient of 0.005, while a bricks is more like 2.0.
Multiplying the drag coefficient by the frontal area gives you the aerodynamic drag, so drag force increases as, say, a tyre gets wider.
According to CyclingPowerLab (link is external), the frontal area of a cyclist in the drops is about 0.36m². The change from 23mm to 25mm tyres adds 0.001436m², an increase of 0.4%. Thats the increase in power youll need to maintain any given speed. It takes 102 watts to maintain 18 miles per hour in this scenario, which increases to 102.5 watts with the fatter tyres.
According to BicycleRollingResistance.com (link is external), theres a 0.3 watt difference in rolling resistance per tyre at this speed between 23mm and 25mm versions of
Continental GP4000s II tyres at 120psi. The half-watt increase in aerodynamic drag is therefore almost exactly countered by the decrease in rolling resistance.
The problem here is that youre not going to get the other benefit of fat tyres a softer ride if you keep the pressure the same. If you do reduce the pressure, then the rolling resistance goes up too, and you end up with slightly more total resistance.
With 28mm tyres it turns out you have a bit more leeway and can drop the pressure a little. At 100psi our 28mm GP4000s IIs have 0.5 watts per tyre less resistance than 23mm tyres at 120psi, and one watt more aerodynamic drag.
Narrow tyres, then, faster or slower? The answer, it turns out, is it depends. The total aerodynamic and rolling resistance depends on tyre size and pressure, and which is faster changes with how you fine-tune those variables.
An extra complication we havent mentioned yet is speed. As you go faster aerodynamic drag increases more than rolling resistance. At finishing sprint and time trial speeds, youre almost certainly better off with narrow tyres.
If you dont race, though, you might have noticed that were talking about small differences in resistance. A 28mm GP4000s II at 80psi has the same rolling resistance as a 23mm at 120psi. Does the extra watt of air resistance matter? Its definitely not a difference you can feel (the threshold for that is 5-10 watts depending on the individual) and its going to make a tiny difference to your ride time even on a long ride. You might well decide the comfort is more than worth it.
http://road.cc/content/feature/1944...-dead-frames-skinny-tyres-rotating-weight-and
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