On 7/2/06, The Maaslands <TheMaaslands@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> .<snip>The same discussion can be made about the curvature or
> non-curvature of fork blades.</snip>
>
> Indeed. The case of curved fork blades has always baffled me. Why did
> they come to be and remain virtually universal if there was no sound
> reasoning for them? During the turn of the century bike boom, some of the
> very best and brightest minds around were employed engineering bicycles and
> those people designing them had access to virtually all of what is known
> today about basic mechanical engineering. I can think of no other bicycle
> frame part that was irrationally designed and survived this fecund period
> unchallenged. The best bikes of the period were remarkably well engineered
> really even by modern standards, yet curved fork blades were almost
> universally used and still are to a very large degree today. I doubt
> tradition was the reason back in aught whatever! Any mechanical engineer
> who looked at a conventional curved fork it would seem to me would
> inevitably conclude that a slight offset between the steerer tube axis and
> the blades leaving the crown would accomplish the exact same geometric
> effect as curved blades with slightly less material being needed. Even
> first year ME students can reason that curved tubes are less efficient
> structurally.
That said, straight bladed forks, irrationally perhaps, offend my eye no matter it seems how many times I see them. Has no engineer ever offered a cogent rationale for the curved blade other than on purely aesthetic grounds?
Kurt Sperry
Bellingham WA
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