Originally Posted by
Ron Damon
When you were worked for Citröen and Ford, did you do your vehicle design calculations without taking into account vehicle load? Did NASA not take into account astronaut weight when landing on the Moon? The elephant in the room, missing in your calculus, is the bike's rider weight, p = mv and F = ma. Mass is of the essence. Disc makes more sense the more massive one is.
I was assuming an apples-to-apples comparison, a constant thrust at the road contact point. But I agree! The more the weight, the greater the argument for discs! At low weight and speed, sure, makes no difference. I never ran into rim heat issues in flatland. And my experience was that in hills, the smaller wheels were getting a lot hotter. No one believed me. The calculation proved more difference than I expected with just wheel size.