Originally Posted by
BluesDawg
One thing about carbon fiber construction is that it can be engineered to have just about whatever characteristics the designers want. For most of the last 30 years I have worked around engineers working with airplane parts made from unidirectional graphite tape (aka carbon fiber). Over the years, the design software has become more and more sophisticated. It is amazing to watch them playing around with various ply patterns and analyzing the resulting strength, rigidity, flexibility etc. We are in a manufacturing rather than design environment, but still I have had some exposure to the design process and it is quite impressive. The demands for supersonic military aircraft and commercial aircraft carrying countless passengers are in most ways far beyond what is needed for bicycle frames, but there are similarities. The stuff is not nearly as fragile as some would have you believe.
There is much discussion from time to time on the Road forum about the merits of CF, similar to this one, but they have one very distinct advantage -- the involvement of Bob Dopolina in the discussions.
Bob is at the coalface of cycling product development in Taiwan, and his posts (subject to certain constraints imposed by commercial considerations) are fascinating to read and appear factual. It is worth doing a search on threads or posts to do with CF and his name to get a great insight.
In regard to the computer programming for designers, I would suppose that those programs or similar have been bought by various bike companies and are used extensively to design frames to ensure the stresses and forces are channelled in the right directions.
There is, of course, some doubt about whether the same care in design is paid by the manufacturers of cheap frames in China. Again, Dopolina's posts on this give great insight as to the risks of buying cheap or knock-off.