With its latest new helmet design ‘to give a pro cycling edge’, Scott Sports collaborated with sports engineers from the University of Adelaide to design a new bike helmet for the Australian professional road racing team ORICA-GreenEDGE. The primary objective of the collaboration was to significantly reduce drag; and the helmet recently made its first public appearance during the 2013 Milan-San Remo road race in Italy.
The Scott Vanish AERO will be available from December 2013 in selected retail stores.
The story began one year ago when ORICA-GreenEDGE approached Scott Sports to propose an evolution of the Vanish EVO helmet for flat and sprint stages. The team requested a helmet with ‘the lowest drag coefficient possible, an advanced aero solution, a dynamic ventilation system’, and of course the same adjustable and comfortable fit.
The project involved investigating the aerodynamics of cycling helmets in action, and the design of a smooth outer helmet surface to minimize drag in all racing conditions, from cruising, through to flat-out sprinting.
“We had to understand the air flow around the helmet at all the various positions and head angles a rider takes while racing,” said Associate Professor Kelso at the University of Adelaide. “Cyclists will be cruising with their heads up in the peloton, then the head will go down when they are out in front pushing hard, and the position will change again when they are sprinting for the finish.”
As noted by Scott, in each of these positions there are different head angles and different flow patterns. The development team needed to find a helmet shape that offered the best balance of performance for all positions. Additionally, they needed to maintain the helmet’s protective properties.
Extensive wind tunnel testing was carried out with the Australian based pro cycling team to optimize the helmet’s shape for both aerodynamics and rider integration. Around 40 prototype designs were tested in the university’s wind tunnels, analyzing drag forces, side forces, ventilation and surface flow patterns.
“The challenge was to perfectly match the ideal aerodynamic shape given by the wind tunnel study with the manufacturing and the cooling requirements, while also keeping an attractive and aggressive design,’’ said Alexandre Dimitriou, Helmet Engineer at Scott Sports.
To keep riders cool the helmet features three ventilation holes on the front surface. The shape and location of these vents were established through evaluating a number of different hole configurations. Scott engineers were enthusiastic to eventually find a shape that offered the required cooling and also proved to have no impact on the overall drag.
The combination of the front vents and the extensive inner cooling channels ensures the team could wear the helmet in quite high temperatures without overheating.
