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hardik
Starting Member

India
4 Posts
Posted - 10/04/2011 :  21:15:13  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Hello Everyone,

We have been participating in HPVC for the past two years .We are the team from India.We have been facing trouble with developing our fairing.
We use FRP(fibre Reinforced Plastic) as the material(Carbon fibre-not a possibility due to lack of funds).

Let me know what material you have been using for fairings for your material.And if possible,send me a tutorial/guide on how to work with fairings.

Thanks and regards
Hardik Tiwari
Team Teevra

India's fastest Velo

Victor Ragusila
recumbent enthusiast

Canada
337 Posts
Posted - 10/04/2011 :  21:50:24  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Hey Hardik

We have been using Carbon Fiber. It is rather expensive, but you can find aerospace grade CF that is expired for aerospace uses. I am sure India has a good set of Suppliers for aerospace. Also boat builders use CF.

Alternatively, Fiberglass is just as good. Rather less strong, so you must use more and it is heavier, but it works just as good for making a nice aero fairing.

Another good materials seems to be zote-foam and coroplast plastic, but i never worked with it.

You can find a LOT of info on this page: http://www.recumbents.com/wisil/whatsup.htm
Also the Toronto and some other teams have their tech reports up at
http://www.rose-hulman.edu/hpv/design_reports.html

Victor
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speedshaper
New Member

USA
70 Posts
Posted - 10/08/2011 :  16:52:53  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
If you can get Zote foam, it builds beautiful and incredibly light fairings. It can be heat formed and heat welded. Search John Tetz and look at his bikes. he has lots of info on the MARS site. (Metro Area Recumbent Society)
Good Luck!
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Royle Juusola
Starting Member

USA
16 Posts
Posted - 10/30/2011 :  16:31:39  Show Profile  Reply with Quote
Hey,

On the SDSMT team we've been using a thermal shrinking airplane fabric stretched over a lightweight frame for the past two years. It doesn't give us as smooth a shape as we could make from carbon fiber, but it's light and cheap.

Royle Juusola
SDSMT HPV team
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G1E2G3
Starting Member

USA
2 Posts
Posted - 11/11/2011 :  07:38:28  Show Profile  Visit G1E2G3's Homepage  Reply with Quote
Coroplast is perhaps the cheapest and lightest non-film or foam material you can go with. It does not heat bond well, if at all, although hot-glue surprisingly bonds it to nearly the same strength as the plastic itself. Tape and zip-ties work as well. If you can connect the joints well, the surface is rather smooth, albeit with the characteristic cardboard ripples.

On the other hand, coroplast has nearly no load-bearing strength, so you will need an internal (or external) sidebar and rollbar, as well as mounts, bringing the weight comparable to that of a CF of FG load-bearing fairing.

Our team went with coroplast last year and will probably this year as well, due to cost constraints. This year we experimented with HDPE plastics (same stuff used for milk bottles), so if you can get a large enough sheet you might want to test that out -- its smoother than coroplast, but harder to work with.

Gustave Granroth.
U of Wisconsin, Madison HPVC Fairing subteam leader(2011-2012).
Edited by - G1E2G3 on 11/11/2011 07:41:21
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