Quinten sucessfully defended his MSc Thesis titled The influence of road surface on power loss: The design of a experimental apparatus that mimics road surfaces and measures power loss on July 16, 2026.

Quinten designed and developed a variable road surface treadmill with 3D printed paver bricks capable of accurately measuring the energy loss due to rolling with or without a rider. He used a custom flexure based load cell system to get very accurate measurements so that we can differentiate among small variations in tires, posture, or suspension. The following video shows the treadmill in action.

Quinten measured the rolling losses of a bicycle with rider over paver bricks for speeds up to 30 km/h and a range of tire pressures. The following plot shows the speed and tire pressure relationship along with the low uncertainty in the measurements. It is remarkable how much losses are due to vibration. At 30 km/h 150 Watts of about 200 Watts are due to vibrations of the system and 50 due to traditional rolling resistance measures. This new measurement system will help us further crack open the research on vibrational power loss.

Quinten was supervised by Jason K. Moore and Georgios Papaioannou. Everyone at the bicycle lab is very proud of Quinten and wishes him the best with his next endeavors. We are also excited to do more research with his measurement system!