What Comes After Carbon Fiber?
08-11-15, 05:48 PM
#1
Interocitor Command
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What Comes After Carbon Fiber?
Seems like bikes have been made with various materials over time as technology permits, such as wood, steel, aluminum, titanium and carbon fiber. Anyone care to venture what will be the next successful breakthrough material?
08-11-15, 05:56 PM
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There's way too much improvement possible yet in CF for anything else to overtake it now
08-11-15, 05:59 PM
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Carbon fiber surpassed everything else because it is FAR cheaper to mass produce than any other bike frame material by a mile.
Anything that will replace CF will need to be cheaper yet for OEMs. Good luck finding that.
Anything that will replace CF will need to be cheaper yet for OEMs. Good luck finding that.
08-11-15, 07:08 PM
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Not if you leave it on the roof when driving into your garage.
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08-11-15, 07:14 PM
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Steel. Retro
08-11-15, 07:30 PM
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08-11-15, 07:34 PM
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I mean carbon fiber bike if is strong when is ride never crashed just from ride is can do crack? I have hear so many thinks about cracks in carbon fiber bikes or cricking noises from bottom bracket all that had make me i not have deside yet to buy carbon fiber bike even i want ride one see how is be carbon finer bike
08-11-15, 07:47 PM
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R u kids seriously not invested in CNT, Carbon Nano Tube, tech yet? Oh well.
08-11-15, 07:50 PM
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08-11-15, 07:59 PM
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don't try this at home.
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I want a graphene bike. Sounds like painting it would double the weight...
Graphene is the strongest material ever tested,[137] with an intrinsic Tensile strength of 130 GPa and a Young's modulus (stiffness) of 1 TPa (150000000 psi).[138] The Nobel announcement illustrated this by saying that a 1 square meter graphene hammock would support a 4 kg cat but would weigh only as much as one of the cat's whiskers, at 0.77 mg (about 0.001% of the weight of 1 m2 of paper)
But it's brittle:researchers from Rice University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have indicated that despite its strength, graphene is also relatively brittle, with a fracture toughness of ~4 MPa√m.[144] This indicates that imperfect graphene is likely to crack in a brittle manner like ceramic materials, as opposed to many metallic materials which tend to have fracture toughnesses in the range of 15–50 MPa√m.
08-11-15, 08:09 PM
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I've seen CNT reinforced materials in aerospace applications, but nothing that would be directly transferable to bicycles. You could use all manner of novel materials if cost was no object, but as noted above, it is ultimately all about the cost. And although you could build a one off bike out of superplastics or some other uber light and strong material, it might not ride worth a damn. It might well take a lot of R & D to make a good ride out of previously unused material. So I think anything that overtakes CF will need to become cheaper in some other widespread applications before it would be taken up as a bike material.
08-11-15, 08:28 PM
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supersilk?
Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon | MIT Technology Review
graphene-nanotube hybrids?
Spiders Ingest Nanotubes, Then Weave Silk Reinforced with Carbon | MIT Technology Review
And the technique’s simplicity suggests that a similar approach could be used on other organisms. “This new reinforcing procedure could also be applied to other animals and plants, leading to a new class of bionic materials,” they say.
graphene-nanotube hybrids?
Last edited by erig007; 08-11-15 at 08:35 PM.
08-11-15, 08:53 PM
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Carbon nanotubes.
08-11-15, 09:48 PM
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Transparent Aluminum (think Star Trek), and confined hydrogen/helium composite. The weight weenies will have the ultimate light bike that just floats across the road. 
08-11-15, 10:22 PM
#20
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One could have a whale of a good time with transparent aluminum. 
Perhaps one day we'll be able to duplicate the memory metal from the craft found at the Roswell crash site or use some nanotech to build custom frames and such. However, I was kind of hoping there would be some materials that weren't quite so futuristic. Carbon fiber has already been around for a couple of decades, but hasn't found its way into the big box bikes yet like aluminum alloys have.
Maybe by the time they're putting the last shovel full of dirt over me something will peek out from the horizon.
Perhaps one day we'll be able to duplicate the memory metal from the craft found at the Roswell crash site or use some nanotech to build custom frames and such. However, I was kind of hoping there would be some materials that weren't quite so futuristic. Carbon fiber has already been around for a couple of decades, but hasn't found its way into the big box bikes yet like aluminum alloys have. Maybe by the time they're putting the last shovel full of dirt over me something will peek out from the horizon.
08-11-15, 10:46 PM
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Hard plastic/resin parts are the future of bicycles. Polished metal is pricey and heavy compared to vacuum formed, extruded, or molded plastic parts. Derailleur's, gears, cogs, rims, even chains could be (cheap, light) plastic.
08-12-15, 01:15 AM
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Yeah...
One of the issues is that the frames are a mix of carbon filaments and resin. The nanotubes, if ever made long enough should give one a good strong lightweight filament, but one would need to find better, lighter replacements for the binding resin, otherwise one would loose some of the benefits of the nanotubes.
One of the issues is that the frames are a mix of carbon filaments and resin. The nanotubes, if ever made long enough should give one a good strong lightweight filament, but one would need to find better, lighter replacements for the binding resin, otherwise one would loose some of the benefits of the nanotubes.
08-12-15, 02:23 AM
#25
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Self driving bicycles. You just stay at home and monitor your ride on your smart phone.