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Loopwheels: A vibration-reducing wheel with integral suspension
- esturk 8y agoHow does it break? I'm guessing like the bicycles, it's probably some sort of disk break mechanism. It's just not very clear from the photos.
- richrichardsson 8y agoProbably your phone auto corrected, but it should be brake, else you're talking about the failure mode! ;-)
- salty_biscuits 8y agoProbably a reasonable thing to worry about with composite wheels!
- clort 8y agoas far as I recall, wheelchairs don't have brakes.. in fact, the braking is the same as the motive power; hand control on the rim
- bbcbasic 8y agoSmash it with a sledgehammer should do the trick.
- nmstoker 8y agoOdd that you have to read quite far down the site's text until they give the context of the type of wheels they're selling (ones for wheelchairs). The pictures in the background do not make it obvious either. Presumably the site was designed by someone close to the company, who obviously knows the product and didn't get it tested on users who didn't know the product (or they'd have picked this up)
- EngineerBetter 8y agoThe top photo, immediately visible on my mobile browser without scrolling, is of their wheels on a wheelchair.
- nmstoker 8y agoThe site didn't load like that when I posted my comment. I had gone back a second time before posting, to be sure. It had a much darker image where it wasn't clear what the item was (you could see the wheel but due to the angle and the dark filter, not what it was part of) Now I agree there is a video of a wheelchair loading, so context is clear now. Would be curious to know if someone changed it.
- kops 8y agoThe interesting bit is found in an animation[1] embedded on the how it works page[2]. 1.https://www.loopwheels.com/wp-content/themes/meat/library/images/anim-directions.gif https://www.loopwheels.com/wp-content/themes/meat/library/im... 2. https://www.loopwheels.com/technical/how-does-it-work/ https://www.loopwheels.com/technical/how-does-it-work/ [edit] formatting
- barbegal 8y agoThe animation is somewhat misleading. Each of the three loops has a constant length. In the animation it looks like one loop gets longer whilst another gets shorter but that is not the case.
- fipple 8y agoWhy doesn’t the wheel deform at all? If it doesn’t, how is it a suspension?
- wingerlang 8y agoThe wheel will be attached to something that will move.
- claudius 8y agoHow much does it increase friction and would this be feasible on other vehicles as well? Once electric cars are eventually here, their wheels will be the primary noise emitters.
- kylegordon 8y agoBy looking at the animation, it appears the contact patch with the ground isn't changing. Just the same as a normal wheel then. What's changing is the internal structure and suspension.
- slavik81 8y agoThe bending itself involves internal friction. If it didn't, you'd oscillate forever after hitting a bump. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but I would be surprised if it were as efficient as a normal wheel when on flat ground. The vibration study page states they will publish numbers on the rolling efficiency of the wheel 'soon'.
- blensor 8y agoBut that is something you should not get rid of in electric cars anyway. They emit already much less noise than regular cars and are thus harder to hear by pedestrians. You don't really want super silent 1ton metal blobs moving around at 30++km/h as far as I know
- abecedarius 8y agoI really think I do. The traffic noise in cities makes conversation impossible almost everywhere outside (I'm hard of hearing); meanwhile public places inside that would otherwise be quiet enough get filled with music. Yes, making quiet cars safe is a challenge, but why not try solving it before assuming a bug is a feature?
- eternauta3k 8y agoJust put a speaker on every car playing Canon in D.
- 8y ago
- 3stripe 8y agoThis company started off making bike wheels circa 2013 - https://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/loopwheels-spokeless-suspension-wheel-on-show-37032/ https://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/loopwheels-spokeless-... - I know because I featured them on my own cycling blog too.
- dochtman 8y agoI was wondering about an application to bikes -- now I wonder why (it seems like) they pivoted to wheelchairs.
- bencompanion 8y agoIn their FAQ they say they're working on MTB wheels, but that the challenge is the (lack of) lateral stiffness in a bigger wheel, which makes sense. The larger the diameter the spring needs to cross, the harder it is to have it only flex in one dimension.
- philjohn 8y agoI would imagine weight - especially for road bike tyres. For comparison, a lightweight Zipp wheelset comes in a just over 1Kg. A mid range lightweight set will be in the 1.4Kg range. There are other ways to make a road bike handle bumps and road buzz, e.g. specifically constructed carbon seat post, or flexible seat stays. A good race to watch for these kind of things is the Paris Roubaix, some of the bikes had rubber inserts to the seat stays a few years ago, but now have enough damping just from carbon layup of that section.
- gameswithgo 8y agoAerodynamics would be horrible, on road bikes that would be a first order downside. As well, tires are already integral suspension and often enough for bike applications.
- twic 8y agoA friend of mine has these on a folding bike. I've ridden it a few times, and it seems fine. He certainly likes them - he considers it a shame that he can't get any more!
- mirimir 8y agoCool, wheels with integrated leaf springs. But what about shocks? What prevents oscillations?
- dingaling 8y agoThere is a German Opel-manufactured bicycle in the Ulster Transport museum that has short springs mounted all around an inner rim with a metal outer band retaining them. Apparently due to the shortage of rubber during WW1 which made pneumatic tyres infeasible but I also wonder about oscillations.
- mirimir 8y agoWow! But with composite leaf springs, I'm guessing that they could make them less perfectly elastic. That'd damp out oscillations, but also increase rolling friction on bumpy terrain. However, vibration also dissipates energy. My mechanics is inadequate, but they very likely optimized.
- xorcist 8y agoIn case people don't know, this was a successful Kickstarter a few years ago for bike wheels. They went to bike shows with a lot of enthusiasm but given the additional weight and cost it was likely a hard sell. Great to see they are still around!
- hegz 8y agoRough terrain on bikes was already solved with suspension or larger tires I doubt they managed to create something that worked better than that.
- Retric 8y agoSuspension sits between a wheel and the vehicle so the entire wheel is displaced over a bump which means it’s momentum exaggerates a shock. Deforming the wheel means far less mass is moved and thus momentum. This is why we use air filled rubber tires in the first place, but they have real size limits. So, this could actually provide a smoother ride. Probably not worth it for a bike, but someone with a broken bone for example can be extremely sensitive to shocks.
- lolc 8y agoThe Loopwheels page is explicit about the wheels having a rigid rim.
- Retric 8y agoYea, but the wheel is more than just the rims. Play around here http://www.wheelbuilder.com/wheel-weight-calculator.html http://www.wheelbuilder.com/wheel-weight-calculator.html. The Rim is generally a large fraction of total wheel weight, but both spokes and Hub's are important. On a bike the total weight also includes the fork and parts of the suspension. Not sure about wheelchairs, but I suspect deforming the center of the wheel still easily cuts unsprung mass in half.
- tsomctl 8y agoIt's very important to reduce unsprung weight, which this does. Vehicle suspension is extremely complicated with a huge number of interrelated variables. It is always possible to make suspension work better, but normally at the price of being more complicated/more expensive. This is a clever idea that isn't that complicated.
- itaysk 8y agorelated: http://softwheel.technology/ http://softwheel.technology/
- nielsbot 8y agoAnd this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweel
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y agoMaybe good for wheelchairs where comfort is crucial, but for anything else (bicycle, car) it would waste a lot of energy, not to mention the rigidity issues.
- taneq 8y agoAs long as the deformation of the loops is largely elastic, it shouldn't waste significant amounts of energy since the energy stored on every 'up' bump should be returned on 'down' bumps. The side-to-side rigidity is my worry about it, but I imagine that could be arbitrarily increased by widening the loops.
- jameshart 8y agoI wonder if the wheel is more suited to wheelchairs because they are pushed at the rim, rather than turned from the hub (as in a bicycle or car). The whole mechanic whereby the hub moves eccentrically relative to the rim when the springs compress seems likely to create all kinds of rolling resistances if the wheel is being turned from the hub - or even if it is being pushed along undriven by a load at the hub. But the unusual rim-driven mode of wheelchairs maybe is the sweetspot for this kind of thing? In particular, it seems that by compressing the springs in particular directions, torques on the wheels will create linear forces on the load - and vice versa - which might be helpful for things like getting a wheelchair up a curb, or over a bump.
- joeborza 8y agoInteresting idea... but not too crazy about the price. £1,000 for a set of wheels seems pretty expensive. How much is a standard set of wheelchair wheels?
- jaclaz 8y agoMatbe it is just me, but isn't £799.00/£849.00 (ex VAT) a tad bit steep as a price? Not that the alternative posted of "softwheel" are any better, 2250/2800 $ for a couple wheels? I have quickly browsed through both sites and they seem to put an accent on lower maintenance costs, but for that kind of money you can buy new (traditional) wheels every other month or so ... Bonus, an article (seemingly actually published) on the matter, it's a short one, only three pages that is IMHO worth reading, only to have an idea of what can be published: http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jmce/papers/NCRIME-2018/Volume-5/3.%2012-15.pdf http://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jmce/papers/NCRIME-2018/Vol... Excerpt: The loop wheels concept is found which has become a very beneficial to the world which reduces the wear and tear of bearing that makes novice after completion its specific life which increases the cost and maintenance of a bicycle. In this case the loop wheels gives a better results and reduces this all the bad impacts created by the normal cycles and gives a one new morning to the innovation.
- Normal_gaussian 8y agoThe first site that I got from searching for "buy wheelchair wheel" has what seems to be a decent range of off-road wheels. £144 for the cheapest, up to £320 for the end of the "cheap / mid". These loopwheels are on there, and have a similarly priced "fat wheel" to compete with. 2-4x the price doesn't seem too bad tbh; its specialist gear for a non-standard use case [0] http://www.epc-wheelchairs.co.uk/wheels-wheel-parts/rear-wheels/wheels http://www.epc-wheelchairs.co.uk/wheels-wheel-parts/rear-whe...
- jccalhoun 8y agoLooks interesting but I would worry about how durable it is. It seems like if one of the springs breaks then you are stuck and you probably have to get in contact with them for a replacement that could take a while.
- jeffrallen 8y agoGood tech and great looks! Want! for my cousin's chair.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 8y agoI'd be interested to learn how much additional energy is required, presumably that's the trade off.
- Too 8y agoHow is this different from simply reducing the tire pressure? Your body weight is constantly pressing down the rotating axis from the center of the wheel so in order to move forward you'll be spending energy on compressing the next section of the wheel equally much? Even if you get some of that energy back once the rear section of the wheel decompresses it's never going to be 100%. It might have some benefits compared to a loosely inflated tire in terms of more parameters to calibrate and less road friction but this will never come close to a suspension locked in the vertical direction on the frame in terms of efficiency. Maybe this is not an important factor for wheel chairs? Edit: Actually the softwheel has an efficiency comparison which claims it's more efficient than both rigid frame and fork suspension, even on flat ground http://softwheel.technology/technology/#softwheel-science-worlds-most-energy-efficient-wheel http://softwheel.technology/technology/#softwheel-science-wo..., maybe if you bike fast enough the wheel never has time to compress so it's still considered round and center?