Imaging bikes, HPV designs, material research

Over the last month or so, I've been on the web, the library and where ever the wind takes you when you're not doing parental work, housework or whatever. Most of the time, I've been trying to run down any wisp of info as to what may be coming from over the horizon or what may have been overlooked as to available materials knowledge/products available right now. A lot of the take offs have come from the WISIL site.
Recently, I've been looking into synthetic rope for substituting in place of stainless steel cable. The problem for all of these strategies, and costs, is termination. Steering toward synthetic came from a website pointing to using synthetic cable as opposed to high strength metals for cable in deep sea applications. To make a long story short, synthetic rope/cable make it possible because of many reasons but the top one being weight. Too much cable down reaches the breaking point of the cable due to the cable's weight. Some synthetics are so light as to float. Their tensile strengths exceed that of steels. There are problems, however, which they(rope manufacturer's) continually look to engineer around. Primary, is UV deterioration.
Another good news to me, is about being able to wrap around a winch better than steel. Of course, this may be another idea which I haven't alluded to here, before. Anyway, the synthetic rope approach can simplify and strengthen the design of the cable tensioned frame. Looking at the 1/8" diameter rope of technora approapriately covered would be a good move unless I can find on the market something similar but superior to my own concoction of UV proofing.
And, the problems of termination creap in again. Basically, two types. Mechanical or mechanical/chemical terminations. Then, one must consider the longivity problem or the unforseen need to replace the cable. One would only want to replace the cable and not the higher priced terminations. Plus, as a maker/designer, I would want the consumer to be able to do the cable replacement without adding the cost of new terminals or have them handling messy chemicals. So, I guess the mechanical connections would be the natural choice. Otherwise, I would have to make up the cables with terminations and so forth. Higher costs to both of us.

The thermoplastics with embedded fiber are just coming into their own through automobile manufacturing and/or military products. Mostly what I found was screws and parts, not flat sheet. Most thermoplastics lack the structural strength at the smaller thicknesses and would deform quite drastically when heatwelded so a special approach for setup and jigging would be needed. Plus, to successfully predict the outcome as to thickness throughout the structure of the external faired frame, one would need the expenses for blowmolding/vacuum molding/part injection and so forth.
I'm not abandoning this approach right now because if a flat sheet of x-diminsion could be bent, the tensional force should be enough to overcome the outside forces, and the inside forces. As the height dimensional shape of the frame is the mirro of the opposite side and the largest consistent shape of the overall frame, it should be able to be formed using tortured sheet and then maybe glued to shape using geometric placed rope focal points of connection. This should hold it to formed shape. If I can use the hot air weld, it would be nice.

But, back to the cable tensioned design with the synthetic rope for the tensioned frame. It looks as though using the smaller dimensional twin tubes with the on-fly-adjustable-cranks would be making the unit more complete from the designs which have come at me. The crank slide and crank housing has to be rethought. Coming to me right now. Crank housing doesn't have to be circular, only the opening for cranks and bearings to match existing parts. Mmm. This is truning out to be convoluted. More to this later after it has run its' course.