Hi-Tech Cycling

Reported December 2008

PAYSON, Utah (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Almost every kid has at one time or another asked for one for Christmas. Now, engineers have developed what may be the most technologically advanced bike to hit the road yet. It took ten years to develop a new incredibly light and strong model that will take cyclists into the future.

Karl Vizmeg has ridden his Delta 7 Arantix bike 1,700 miles. He has raced dozens of bikes, but says a new see-through model is the strongest and lightest.

"This is phenomenal," Vizmeg told Ivanhoe. "I’ve had so much fun this year, particularly with the 'wow' factor, but [also] because it’s such a great racing bike."

Vizmeg’s $8,500 bike was handmade in Utah using geometry and architecture. To make bikes like his, workers first make an isotruss, a form made from isosceles triangles. Then, they wind carbon fiber around the form -- creating a great strength-to-weight ratio.

"We go back afterwards and hand-wind all the little Kevlar strands, inch-by-inch, over each isotruss," Tyler Evans, program manager at Delta 7 Sports in Payson, Utah, told Ivanhoe.

They then bake the bike to bond the materials. The mountain bike frame weighs 2.6 pounds. The new Ascend road bike weighs 1.8.

"This bike rides like bikes that are much heavier and stronger and built like a tank, but it’s still in the featherweight category," Evans said.

You might think the open-lattice design wouldn't be aerodynamic, but Delta 7 says wind-tunnel tests prove the bikes are as aerodynamic as traditional ones. The Ascend bike has another advantage.

"You definitely feel like a rock star, like you’re famous, like you belong in the Tour de France or some high-end race," cyclist Dan Weller told Ivanhoe.

Right now, that feeling requires patience. It takes about 100 hours to build each IsoTruss bike. Delta 7 produced only 200 IsoTruss models in 2008, but is working on ways to mass-produce them in the near future. To get one right now, you have to add yourself to the waiting list and put down a $1,000 deposit.

The Research Society, the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Lester Muranaka
Public Relations
Delta 7 Sports LLC
Payson, UT 84651
(801) 592-0950
lester@Delta7Sports.com

Materials Research Society
Warrendale, PA 15086-7573
(724) 779-3003
webmaster@mrs.org

Mike Breen and Annette Emerson
American Mathematical Society
Providence, RI 02904-2294
(800) 321-4267
http://www.ams.org
paoffice@ams.org

Ivars Peterson
Mathematical Association of America
Washington, DC 20036-1358
(800) 741-9415
http://www.maa.org
ipeterson@maa.org

Almost every kid has at one time or another asked for one for Christmas. Now, engineers have developed what may be the most technologically advanced bike to hit the road yet. It took ten years to develop a new incredibly light and strong model that will take cyclists into the future.

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