[Rokeby]

"Sometimes apparently simple things have an underlying complexity that is astounding.
Take a bicycle wheel for example. It's round, has a rim, a tire and some spokes and
turns in a circle. Simple, right?

"Wrong.



"The aerodynamics of a bicycle wheel are so complex that powerful CFD (computational
fluid dynamics) software running on high performance computer (HPC) systems are
required to generate the simulations needed to evaluate different design
approaches...

The aerodynamic flow around a rotating bicycle wheel, including its interaction
with the front fork and frame components, is incredibly complex. For example, in
one recent study, Godo investigated multiple wheels and fork/frame combinations
at 10 different yaw angles. About 3.6 gigabytes of data were generated during the
steady simulation; the unsteady simulation threw off nearly 1.2 terabytes of data.
The most recent work includes high resolution full bike simulations that are generating
exponential data growth."

Read more:
Designing Bicycle Wheels In the Cloud