WTD: Tyre designer

acer2012

I'm writting a 5000 word essay entitled "What factors effect mountain bike tyre design" for an A level project and am finding it hard to find anything directly relevant. At the moment I'm trying to find out about the intricacies of difference tyre casings and the hysterisis of the rubbers used for treads.

So, what I'm asking is, are there any off-road tyre designers on the forums that would willing to help?

Any help will be much appreciated!

benpinnick

You should dig out the recent article (maybe on Pinkbike.com) about the new Bontrager G4 tyre. He spent some time talking about why they do what they do. Might help.

thelonegroover

http://sheldonbrown.com/tyres.html may help. You can talk about compounds, tread patern, size, wal thickness, diameter.

thelonegroover

http://www.conti-tyres.co.uk/conticycle ... fety.shtml

angry_bird

What they said^^, probably useful stuff there. 5000 words though is a lot... just on tyres from a couple of articles. think I read something in the latest dirt, I'll see if I can find it on the web.

Yeah it's not on the interwebz but it is in December's Dirt, stuff about Schwalbe tyres and tyre stuff that might be useful, still not a massive amount of information though.

angry_bird

Also

acer2012 wrote:

I'm writting a 5000 word essay entitled "What factors effect mountain bike tyre design" for an A level project

Should probably be affect instead of effect, unless you say "What factors have an effect on mountain bike tyre design"...

lostboysaint

Angry Bird wrote:

Also

acer2012 wrote:

I'm writting a 5000 word essay entitled "What factors effect mountain bike tyre design" for an A level project

Should probably be affect instead of effect, unless you say "What factors have an effect on mountain bike tyre design"...

I thought that, was going to post and then thought "nah, the op surely isn't doing that as a subject for English so I'll let them off!"

njee20

I wouldn't, instant black mark! Should be 'affect'.

acer2012

Damn it, you're all right. I did mean to check to be honest but that bit slipped my mind... :oops:

Thanks everyone else, the Sheldonbrown stuff is great. Like people said the manufacturers stuff is fairly limited, probably to protect commercial secrets. Having said that the Schwalbe technical info is pretty useful.

If anyone is a materials engineer, that would be really useful as-well!

Clank

As an aside, Dunlop design their motorcycle racing tyres in Birmingham. This may be track only but the same kind of issue apply (lean agnles, multi compound etc). They may be able to provide some really good advice and leads. I've seen some cracking books in the past, covering these subject too.

Don't be afraid to stick a few relevant search terms into the 'Scholar' section on google too (it's a little buried, but it's a killer search function).

acer2012

Thanks Clank, I hadn't realized that; I’ll send another e-mail to Dunlop. Cheers!

If you can remember the names of any books that would be great as I've already tried google scholar, Jstor, etc.

*edit*: OOOoo I haven't actually sent them an e-mail before, even better!

The Northern Monkey

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... ated=false

using google scholar..

acer2012

Yeah, it's weird, I can find obscure, improbable sources (e.g. air deflectors for tyres!) that are great. But try and find anything similar on more main-stream topics like tread pattern and everything goes quiet. :?