Friday, September 11, 2009

More Trailer Data

I recently re-vamped the Burley Solo. It was, at the time of the last Chuckette test, equipped with a suspended mesh seat, laid flat to accommodate the dog. That put the child carrier directly in contact with the axel on bumps. (And the dog, too. No wonder he seemed ornery.) I ordered new seat mesh, installed it to get the trailer back to stock, and ran Chuckette over the really rough trail, as well as the smooth asphalt, to see what kind of RMS G-forces were produced by the infant car seat in the bike trailer in the more stock configuration. This Burley Solo is a bit old, and has no suspension. Tests on Chuckette with a suspended BOB stroller indicate that suspension makes a pretty huge difference. We won’t be upgrading this Burley solo, but in the Spring we expect to buy a new, dedicated bike trailer for the dog. These are equipped with standard elastomer suspension, so I will test the difference then.

In the mean time, the child carrier was mounted on the sling seat in the bike trailer with a length of very strong rock climbing webbing. I towed it behind the Catrike, the same on I use for the tests below (and real riding now) with Chuckette and her real-life sibling in the Baby Bjorn.

Some results:

 burley solo baby testbed graph 2

Mean: 1.07
Median: 1.06
Max: 4.60
Minimum 0.04
Stdv 0.41
samples >2.5Gs 74
consecutive samples > 2.5Gs 0

 

This is a bit better than the original data from the flat slung floor which, as I mentioned, transferred some axel shock directly into the carrier.

Mean: 1.10
Median: 1.07
Max: 5.16
Minimum 0.03
Stdv 0.51
samples >2.5 Gs 165.00
consecutive samples >2.5 Gs 2

 

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