美国数学建模竞赛特等奖论文——2001 A O Spokes or Discs【数学建模】.pdfVIP

Spokes or Discs? 211 Spokes or Discs? W.D.V. De Wet D.F. Malan C. Mumbeck Stellenbosch University Matieland, Western Cape South Africa Advisor: Jan H. van Vuuren Introduction It is well known that disc wheels and standard spoked wheels exhibit differ- ent performance characteristics on the race track, but as yet no reliable means exist to determine which is superior for a given set of conditions. We create a model that, taking the properties of wheel, cyclist, and course into account, may provide a definitive answer to the question, ìWhich wheel should I use today?î The model provides detailed output on wheel perfor- mance and can produce a chart indicating which wheel will provide optimal performance for a given environmental and physical conditions. We use laws of physics, plus data from various Web sites and published sources, then numerical methods to obtain solutions from the model. We demonstrate the use of the modelís output on a sample course. Roughly speaking, standard spoked wheels perform better on steep climbs and trailing winds, while disc wheels are better in most other cases. We did some validation of the model for stability, sensitivity, and realism. We also generalised it to allow for a third type of wheel, to provide a more realistic representation of the choice facing the professional cyclist today. A major difficulty was obtaining reliable data; sources differed or even con- tradicted one another. The range of the data that we could find was insufficient, jeopardizing the accuracy of our results. c The UMAP Journal 22 (3) (2000) 211ñ223. Copyright 2001 by COMAP, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commer