Amazing News

(From the London Star-Daily-NewsGram)

Cyclists, do you really want to be faster than everyone else?  If so, you must be prepared to abandon some preconceptions.  Don’t worry, this isn’t about training like a demon, or starving, or hiding a motor in your bottom bracket.  But if you really really want to go very fast on a bicycle, you have to be ready to accept some different approaches.  So says Millard Snidemoore, PhD., a leading British aerodynamic physicist.   Doctor Snidemoore has developed a new technology that can enable ordinary cyclists to attain and hold incredible speeds.

In addition to his attainments in Physics, it should be noted, Doctor Snidemoore claims a bit of a cycling lineage.  He is the great grandson of Col. Cecil Hawthorn Oxborn-Higgins.  Col. Oxborne-Higgins is remembered for founding the pioneering company,  Oxborn-Higgins Safety Bicycle Foundry.

Doctor Snidemoore’s revolutionary recumbent bicycle, powered by an ordinary human, not a Cat 1 racer on steroids, as achieved speeds of 60 to 90 mph along the flats, and as much as 45 mph uphill.

“It takes a bit of getting used to,”  says the test rider, Mitch Alred.  “And you have to be prepared to go really slow to start with.  But man this thing is incredible, once you get it going.”

So just what is the big secret behind this astonishing device, and how does it work?  To understand that, it is first necessary to review a few basic facts.

FACT:  Heavy bicycles go down hill faster.

FACT:  Recumbents are faster down the hills and in the flats.

FACT:  Streamlined enclosures enable greater speeds.

FACT:  Wind drag is about the single greatest speed limiting factor.

FACT:  Most recumbents are a heavier than most upright bikes.

FACT:  Streamlining enclosures, called “fairings” greatly reduce air-drag, enabling greater speed.

FACT:  Air is always in motion, even down at the molecular level, and that motion can be used as an energy source.  (This is what enables sailboats to do what they do.)

Doctor Snidemoore has developed a new kind of recumbent streamliner.  But there is a bit more to it than that.  This is not just another streamlined, fully enclosed bicycle.  Doctor Snidemoore’s device is not passive, as are other streamliners.  Rather it is an active system, one that harnesses the hidden power of thermo-dynamic airflow to increase the speed of the bicycle.

In a nutshell, here’s how it works.  It’s well known that some shapes move through the air with less resistance than others.  This is why parachutes are shaped the way they are, and why bullets are pointed.  In the case of the parachute, we want to increase air drag, whereas for the bullet, we wish to decrease it.

The resistance that air presents to a moving body is called “drag coefficient.”  Generally the coefficient of drag increases as the body moves faster, and decreases as the shape is made more “slippery.”  What Doctor Snidemoore has done, is to find a way to make the drag coefficient go negative.  If that were the case, then vehicle would actually be aided or accelerated as it passed through the air.  Snidemoore refers to the effect and the device that produces it as a “hyper-para foil.”  His published work (what little of it there is that is accessible to the public) states,  “… this is an extension of the same technologies that have long established successes in enabled high performance stealth airplanes and black helicopters.”, by using a sort of reverse air-drag.

To achieve this effect, the skin of the vehicle must be flexible, and capable of being changed dynamically.  This requires several computers, batteries, hydraulic pumps, an air compressor, a lot of tubing and cable, and an array of actuators on the inside of the skin.  The technique is called Adaptive Surface Geometry, or ASG, and makes extended use of micro hydraulic-pneumatic actuators.

All of that makes for a very heavy recumbent bicycle.  But that actually helps the situation.  You see, the hyper-para foil effect is negligible until the vehicle is traveling at a high enough speed.  So to get things going, the rider must first pedal the bike up a hill, preferably a long, tall hill, with a steep down grade.  Once at the top, it is possible to accelerate down the hill using the hill’s acceleration, and a very high geared drivetrain, to get the vehicle up to the critical 42 mph “actuation velocity.”

Once “actuation velocity” is achieved, the rider still has to pedal to keep the effect going, but the effort is greatly reduced, and the speeds are very fast.  “It’s almost as if you were getting something for nothing,”  said test rider Alred.

One problem with the whole system is that it is very difficult for a rider to make it go up a hill to get things started.  This problem was very cleverly solved by incorporating two separate drivelines into the bike.  One of the gear systems is a very low gear setup, which allows an ordinary rider to move the 179 pound machine up a steep hill at speeds of 0.5 to 1.5 mph. 

Of course it’s impossible to stabilize such a heavy bicycle at such low speeds, so another innovation was included.  There is a set of retractable stabilizer wheels, much like the training wheels found on children’s bicycles.  These keep the machine from falling over at the very low initial climbing speeds.  Then, once over the top, the Snidemoore Hyper-para foil picks up speed quickly.  At that point the pedal power is shifted to the high gear drive system, and the stabilizers are retracted.

“It hasn’t all been a smooth trip,”  said laboratory test rider Alred.  “We had a few very dicey rides before we figured out that we had to make the training wheels retractable.”

There are other problems, still to be solved.  “This thing is a real problem in traffic.  You just do not want to stop for intersections,”  test rider Alred stated.  “Still, I think it has some real promising potential.”

We do too.

Doctor Snidemoore was unavailable for comments, due to an unfortunate laboratory accident.  “There is simply no truth to the scandalous rumors about the Doctor’s accident,”  Alred said.  “He is a dedicated scientist, and the presence of the sheep was simply an unfortunate coincidence.”

We hope the good Doctor enjoys a speedy recovery from his injuries.  We can’t wait to learn more about this fascinating discovery.