4" vs. 6" vs. 8" wheels. Advantages?

[548swimmer]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Ok, I continued my searches and reading and actually found some interesting threads.

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...traction+width was my starting point. It is quite a long thread discussing Friction as a function of area. This lead to a pair of white papers http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1381 and http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1382 which have some interesting conclusions.

I can keep searching or you could wait until you get into the shop and do some tests yourself. Whichever.

Those threads are a good starting point, but after reading the write-up it does not appear that the total weight was evenly distributed, which makes the results sketchy at best.

An interesting experiment (and one I'll do tomorrow at school if I have time) would be to keep pressure constant while changing the surface area.

The issue with a drag experiment is that the knobs on the tread are interacting with the hooks radially instead of linearly, so that could affect actual performance.

If I get a chance to run the experiment I'll have the results up by kickoff!