The team that worked on Tarmac SL7 had three cloud-based super computers going day and night. Every single ply of carbon in every frame iteration required upwards of 21,000 calculations in FEA. Equivalent to millions of calculations for every frame and for every layup revision in development. Keep in mind, as a Rider-First Engineered™ bike, every size Tarmac SL7, 44-61cm, got the same treatment.
But these numbers only tell a fraction of the story, says Nadia Carroll, “It goes so much deeper than those simple numbers—especially if you pull out EVERY calculation that is running in the background of our simulation software and how many times it iterates on top of itself. Meaning there are even more calculations running in the background, so the computational hours compound on themselves. So, thinking of that time, there's no chance I could complete one of the complex rounds of calculations by hand, even if I worked on it full time for the duration of the Tarmac project.”
This level of obsession is how you combine a trio of characteristics that were previously thought to be unheard of—aerodynamic, lightweight and superior handling.
That’s where the new Tarmac SL7 comes into play.