Originally Posted by
fjyang
The test result says they're fastest not Sofride, but its not hard to imagine give the design. Softrides don't have the seat tube (its been integrated with the beam/top tube) Is also does away with seat stays so you got 3 drag elements remove from frame. Bi-Wing planes of WWI will never be as aerodynamic then mono wing planes of WWII. You can refine the Bi-Wings till the wings fall off but they'll never be as efficient aero wise to a mono wing design. This is whats going on with road bikes today, they're stuck with the traditional layout so the only thing they can do is shape tubes to be wings but the amount of exposed frame elements cannot be reduce unlike beam frames designs.
First off, I have nothing against Softrides. I understand that they are not a bad bike, look cool and are faster than some newer UCI legal bikes(Scott Plasma, Planet X, and so forth) . However, I do not think that they were designed in such a way to compete aerodynamically with Cervelo/felt's carbon bikes. These bikes may have more members, but remember the seattube on a Cervelo/Felt actually does more good for the bikes as they fair a spinning wheel. They use shapes that have coefficient of drag near .1.
I try not to compare objects that go hundreds of miles an hour to things that go 25mph. About 7 years ago it was shown that flight worthy NACA profiles have no business in bicycle aerodynamics and that the widest point on a bicycles tube should be further back than a NACA airfoil.
Should we start with aerodynamics 101? Aerodynamics is a factor of frontal area and coefficient of drag. I guarantee that the frontal area of a Softride in an equivalent size is equal to any one of todays top end UCI legal bikes if not more. Felt's downtubes/seattubes are 25mm wide and the headtube is exactly 40mm, with a 19mm seatpost. This far makes up for the inclusion of seatstays in regards to frontal area. I can not fully comment on their coefficient of drag but softrides have a lot of bumps/hardwear/cables sticking out all over the place, and their tube shapes were not chosen due to wind tunnel testing. However, I can't tell you what the exact effect with a rider on is but most testing shows that very few bikes test different with/without a rider.
Lets start with the basics, Headtubes on softrides are wider than todays carbon bikes, not to mention all the hardwear that is on what is smoothe sided headtubes/downtubes. The downtubes have a much worse shape than todays UCI legal bike, they are basically a pointed oval(Cd of around .6), not an airfoil(Cd around .1). The downtubes though deep are also quite wide. The cable routing is all over the place as compared with the new industry standard of right behind the stem. The seatclamp mechanism is bulky and the rear wheel could be covered better to prevent a spinning wheel from being a leading edge.
Like I said, non-uci legal designs could better today's uci legal bikes but Softride though a nice bike that is very competitive for a 10 year old design, does not represent the best that there is to offer in that regard. Softride Was Not Designed in the windtunnel, they made it with some general knowledge but no exact proof of what works aerodynamically with regard to bicycles.
This is a UCI illegal design that is THOROUGHLY proven in the windtunnel, if you want to worship a 10 year old bike, I suggest worshipping this one...
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_bJOqLo9W0pQ/R9...U/IMG_0247.JPG
This photoshop version looks much cleaner/faster...
http://s3images.coroflot.com/user_fi...EMlPPAUyo9.jpg