It’s a fine line between having a luxury versus a necessity.
We prefer fiberglass because it holds its shape at transonic speeds. Sometimes we jump out of airplanes & helicopters, I worked on a British Sea Harrier while in hover.
The velomobile monocoque is on the drawing board.
The past six months have brought forth four fresh fiberglass fairings. This time we used clear epoxy, not the yellow tainted crap in a tube. This way the color pigment goes further and yields translucency.
This is not a cargo bike, it’s a touring bike with streamlined bicycle research going back over 40 years.
The fairings are designed to avoid aerodynamic drag.
Probably there is an equation that says aerodynamic drag increases with cargo capacity, but we started to make a quarter scale Kenworth spoiler with a 12 pack of canned beverage inside, no more. The tail should have an 11° taper but it’s not shown here.
I want more fresh material for a do over, I have honeycomb polypropylene but the fiberglass I ordered is back ordered now.
Generally if you’re turning a student project engineering into a business you’d charge ten times more for the finished product than what $$$ the raw materials costs.
The students who succeeded were tutored by Grumman assembly line engineers and riveters from World War II.
by AviationMetalSmith1