Cycling &Shop Talk 14 Feb 2007 12:05 am
Rant – Computer Simulations
I’ve just been dredging through my various biking related links, and I’m getting depressed by all the web articles on various computer simulations I’m finding – like this article on frame strain energy, and this article on wheel deformations. and articles like this on frame stiffness. As an aerospace engineer that has used computer simulations and experimental setups to analyse a thing or two over the years – here is some advice: Don’t have any faith in a computer simulation unless you can use it to predict something you then measure in the lab. Don’t have any faith in something you can measure in the lab unless you can observe it in the world. This is called VALIDATION. So, if you want to conclude something about spoke tensions in a wheel, get out the tensiometer and grab yourself a bike wheel, as this is likely to work a good deal better than your computer. Experimentation is important, but without validation, you’re just guessing.
