I'm enjoying this discussion, as I'm looking for a race wheel for crits and flatish road races. I have been focusing on the 60mm +/- profile. Zipp, Enve, etc are out of my price range. Also considering the Williams System 58. Any other alternatives would be greatly appreciated. It would seem most in this class are in the 1600g+ range?

There's a reason our CFD iterations and subsequent wind tunnel prototypes often vary in width or location of maximum width by .25-.5mm, and it's not because we like spending a bunch of money on prototypes and days waiting on CFD solutions.

Radii similarly vary by small amounts as well.

As we were moving to what became the Firecrest and before our CFD development was fully fleshed out, I had an 808 profile that was quite close to where we our now. I was pretty proud of it, but in the tunnel it was within 5 grams of the old 808 at every data point.

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Zippy engineer

Right, because we all know there is only one answer http://www.ae.illinois.edu/m-selig/ads/coord_database.html to any question.

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BDop Cycling Co., Ltd.
www.bdopcycling.com

There's lots of answers, particularly when you consider drag, side force, center of pressure, and shedding frequency, among others (not to mention that the rim profile needs to function as a leading edge as well as a trailing edge). Some answers happen to be much better than others. Hence the iterative process I mentioned.

There's also some much more useful sites for examining the more well-known airfoil options, particularly those that are demonstrably more appropriate for the Reynolds numbers typical of the flow regime in which we operate. Here's one that's much more searchable if you know what you're after:
http://www.worldofkrauss.com/foils/search" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In the meantime, perhaps we should let this thread return to topic...

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Zippy engineer

This looks like a decent one to try with a process I talked about earlier:
http://www.worldofkrauss.com/foils/1340

My half baked wheel design process:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=103936&start=30#p949126

What do you think Waldo, care to hire me? haha

Agreed.

BTW, thanks for the link. I'm familiar with that site but I used the one I posted because it was far more dramatic - like the black marble slab in 2001...

I think it's pretty clear who sets the bar in the industry and thanks for being a sport while I bust your chops about it. smilie face.

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BDop Cycling Co., Ltd.
www.bdopcycling.com