Carbon headlines bike tech conference

A new, one-off conference, ‘Materials in Bicycles’, will be held on Friday, 6th July. It will feature big-name speakers such as Dr Alex Moulton and will be staged in the London HQ of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) at 1 Carlton House Terrace. This building backs onto the Mall, where the Tour de France prologue will start on Saturday, 7th July. http://www.iom3.org/venue/

Organised by IOM Communications, the events arm of IOM3, the conference will be chaired by BikeBiz editor Carlton Reid.

The speakers include bike design guru Mike Burrows, originator of the compact road frame during his consultancy work for Giant Bicycles in the 1990s. Burrows, author of Bicycle Design: Towards the Perfect Machine, was an early advocate of the use of carbon composites in the creation of bicycles. He designed the Lotus monocoque composite frame used by Chris Boardman to win individual pursuit gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Boardman will also be at the IOM3 conference, talking about bike design from a rider’s perspective. During his racing career Boardman was known as ‘the Professor’ because of his technical know-how and scientifically-sound training methods.

Other speakers include Cy Turner, owner of Cotic MTBs, and composites expert Graham Barnes of engineering analytics company Engenuity of Cuckfield, West Sussex.

Carbon composites may rule the pro peleton, and so will predominate at ‘Materials in Bicycles’, but there will also be a talk about magnesium frames from folding bike designer Richard Thorpe of KKL.

Dr Martin Strangwood of the University of Birmingham will present a paper titled ‘Advanced Metallic Frame Materials.’

Future’s Procycling magazine will bring along a selection of Tour bikes and Dr Nigel Mills of the University of Birmingham will give a talk on cycle helmet technology.

IOM Communications is open to offers for a bike trade company to be sponsor of the conference. The sponsorship deal would include corporate hospitality on the Saturday evening, directly after the Tour de France opening ceremony at Trafalgar Square, a five minute walk from IOM3’s HQ.