Does the weight of a bicycle influence its downhill acceleration?

Aerodynamic forces (air resistance) are the primary factor that work against a cyclist when rolling downhill. The acceleration down a hill is related to the acceleration that would occur to gravity minus the aerodynamic drag. Aerodynamic drag is related to the frontal area of a cyclist and mass.As the frontal area increases, so does drag.

However, as the mass increases the drag decreases. One would assume that a heavier cyclist is also bigger.So as mass increases, so does frontal area. However, they do not increase in proportion to one another.

Mass increase in greater proportion. Area as a squared function and mass as a cubed function Heavier cyclists accelerate faster Actually, the previous answers don't quite fully accurately take into account air resistance. It is true that the heavier you are, the higher your terminal velocity will be.

But you will also accelerate faster prior to reaching that terminal velocity, according to the formula sigmaF = ma, as follows, where F(weight) is the force due to your weight, which is proportional to mg, F(air) is the force due to wind resistance, which is independent of mass sigmaF = ma F(weight) - F(air) = ma a = F(weight) - F(air)/m Therefore a is proportional to mg - F(air)/m which gets closer and closer to g as m increases; in other words, you accelerate faster the heavier you and your bike are together. However, hopefully you weigh much more than any human-powered bicycle, and so I don't know how much difference a reasonable real-world variation in bicycle weight would really make in terms of acceleration Answer Depends what you mean? If you mean its downhill SPEED then yes it does (also fat guy fall faster ;-D, if you mean its ability to acclelerate down hill then no!

Because it takes more energy to accelerate a bike which is heavier! Answer Not really, although it will make it harder to manoeuvre and require more braking to stop. The reason for this is that the force of gravity on an object will cause it to accellerate downwards at the same rate regardless of weight as first described by Galileo (although wind resistance may reduce the actual speed).

However, once moving, a heavier downhill bike will require more braking force to slow or stop because of it's greater momentum Many companies and racing teams are looking at ways of making lighter downhill race bikes (while maintaining frame travel and strength) as these will roll faster and be able to accelerate faster out of corners (due to them requiring less effort to get going) In some cases, riders will say that heavier bikes are more stable in the air or less likely to be thrown off line when riding rough ground. For most riders though, it's best to get the lightest bike you can that's strong enough for what you're going to do with it.

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