Interesting research from the cycling science literature

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Aerodynamic drag in cycling team time trials Blocken et al., 2018

Technology has always been an integral part of cycling. Obviously, bicycles are themselves technology, and also rely on technology (i.e. good quality road surfaces) to be a practical means of transportation. Cycling has also taken its fair share of the spoils obtained from the increase in the rate of technological development of recent years; innovations such as carbon fibre, power meters, and GPS computers (amongst many others) have transformed cycling at every level.

Technological innovations are also helping push forward our knowledge of the physics of cycling, and a great deal of this progress has come from the study of aerodynamics. Field tests and wind tunnels were a starting point, subsequently complemented by computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which utilizes modern information-processing capabilities to simulate highly complex physical situations in a much more comprehensive way than the relatively two-dimensional analysis possible in a wind tunnel.