#Bike geometry calculator how to#

It’s a counter-intuitive notion, to say the least, however the strategy works because it directs the wheels back under the falling mass.

#Bike geometry calculator how to#

The trick was in learning how to steer into, not away, from every fall, because that is what makes a bike remain upright.

However, any effort that was made to stop the handlebars from turning ultimately proved futile because the bike would always capsize. Take a moment to think about what it was like learning to ride a bike: the thing had this horrible tendency to swerve, and quelling it seemed to be the secret to remaining upright. The geometry of any bike comprises a variety of measures and angles, but it is those that are important to steering that dictate how it will handle. There appears to be a hierarchy of sorts, because some parameters have a bigger impact than others, but in every instance, these effects can be traced back to one single mechanism, and that is the steering of the bike. While our understanding is not yet complete, all of this work has identified a core set of parameters that dictate the behaviour of a bike. Academics have dissected the dynamics of motion and defined the minimum requirements for a self-stable bike while the bike industry has experimented with various designs to define what works and what doesn’t work for every riding discipline. Two centuries of experience has taught us a lot about the way that a bike behaves and how to make it easier to control. If nothing else, when a bike is easy to control, it will elevate the rider’s enjoyment of the sport. It’s an issue that is important to the safety of a rider as well as their confidence, and in some instances, it can assist their performance, too. That’s because they influence the way that the bike handles, be it on the ground, in a corner, up a hill, or even in the air. There are other aspects to frame geometry, such as the head tube angle or the amount of trail, which have no bearing on the fit of the bike, yet they can still have an effect on the rider.

This is something that we have discussed previously in our article on sizing up a road bike where we identified those aspects of frame geometry that are important to fit. When it comes to buying a new bike, most riders understand the importance of finding the right size frame. This is something that we started to decipher with our original article on the topic in 2011, and now, Matt Wikstrom revisits it to delve even deeper into the parameters that influence the handling of a bike. Head angle, fork rake, trail, and wheel flop: these are just some of the parameters that influence the steering and handling of a bike, however in the absence of any context, they often appear as a set of meaningless numbers in a frame geometry chart. Now there are dozens of specialised bikes on the market and the distinctions that separate them are often related to the way that they perform and behave, which in turn, is dictated by the geometry of the frame and fork. Over the last 200 years, the design of the bicycle has evolved in a variety of ways to meet the needs of a diverse range of riding disciplines.