Road Cycling - Feel of Materials, Carbon,Aluminum,etc

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There is a really good site on building your own composite frame, which is archived at Sheldonn Brown's encyclopeadic site.

The factors you have to set are torsional stiffness, (along the axis from rear axle to head-tube), and the vertical compliance. You also need to build in a safety factor for max loading, which, surprisingly, occurs at low speed, when riding a bump or pothole.
Most factory frames are set to cater for the worst case; a newbie rider with poor skills, or a power-athlete with no finesse or style.
You also have to build in a steering geometry to give the handling you require.

You may want to build a test frame that is modular, so you can replace sections of different stiffness. If you dont know steering geometry, then you may want to build in a variable head-sube angle, and a fork with variable rake (by way of horizontal axle dropouts). This would all be a testbed, for determining the factors, so you can build a prototype. You would have to test the prototype to destruction (they fail with a loud bang).
Id love to do a project like that, but dont have the skills or workshop.

The only way to decide what feels right, is to ride lots of different frames. I wouldnt expect a newbie rider to be able to sense the difference between frames in the way a more experienced rider could.

Any frame material can be made to have any "feel" that you want. Stiff, whippy, springy... whatever. It's just a matter of tubing diameter and wall thickness.

Aluminum is best. After the first hour your entire body goes numb from vibration and you no longer feel the pain of pushing hard ;)

Seriously, cycletourist is pretty much on top of it. Frame design has improved so much that a decent ride can be attained from even stiff materials.

I love my Aluminum.

Isn't this just like someone decribing music to a deaf man? I think you need to ride some bikes to understand the material. Remember the rider is a big factor also, a big guy might not think aluminum transmit too much vibration, where as someone that weights 130 pounds will think otherwise. Then there is riding style, someone small will not flex the frame much, where a sprinter will feel the flex.

Isn't this just like someone decribing music to a deaf man? I think you need to ride some bikes to understand the material. Remember the rider is a big factor also, a big guy might not think aluminum transmit too much vibration, where as someone that weights 130 pounds will think otherwise. Then there is riding style, someone small will not flex the frame much, where a sprinter will feel the flex.
Thats right.Also the wheelset will make a difference,psi,lots of stuff.Of course all the bikes i test road had lower psi,gee thats odd.