INTERVIEW
Parcours founder Dov Tate tells CW about a new study into handling stability that could revolutionise how riders choose their hoops
You’ve got to be more than just ‘faster’ because everybody is doing faster now,” says Dov Tate, the founder of British wheel brand Parcours. “A wind tunnel will tell people how fast they will go but now we’re looking at a way to quantify how stable they are,” he continues. “But there’s no unit for handling stability. There is for drag. Most people understand what a watt of drag is. I want to be able to put a relatable figure on stability. Is a saving of 3.5 watts worth £1,000? But if it’s 3.5 watts plus 15% improved stability how does that change things?”
Three years ago Tate, an Oxfordeducated engineering graduate, worked with Nottingham Trent University to develop a differential rim profile that he arrived at via real-world studies using marine wind sensors attached to the front and rear axles.
Parcours was first to market a wheelset – the Strade – that featured a wide, U-shaped front rim paired with a narrower, more V-shaped rear. His testing had shown that the ‘dirty’ air hit the rear wheel at an overall shallower angle compared with the front, in clean air, and the Strade was optimised using data collected with the marine sensors and validated in the wind tunnel.
Three years on, Tate has started working on what he believes will be the new crucial measurement of wheel performance along with watt savings – handling stability. He talked to Cycling Weekly exclusively about how he plans to implement it, this time using accelerometers fitted to bikes with different wheels and wheel combinations and again tested in the real world, again with Dr Steve Faulkner and Nottingham Trent University’s sports engineering department.
“Essentially the way we tested it was to fit an accelerometer to the bike, fit the wheels that we’re testing and then ride an out and back with a controlled effort aiming to maintain power, speed, position. Runs are done back to back so in theory weather conditions should be close to the same and the idea is that if you run enough of the tests it normalises.
“We used just one on the edge of the handlebar because that’s where you get the most motion. One of the biggest challenges with the accelerometry data was trying to squelch out the ‘noise’ from turns and bumps. It has taken a fair amount of time to get to that point. And we had to set a threshold so that an acceleration below a certain G-force doesn’t count as an ‘oh s**t moment.”
Tate explains that alongside the data from the accelerometers the test riders were asked to fill in a questionnaire with a ‘perception scale’.
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