5 46 | November 2022


MINUTES WITH...


Using a unique active polymer, Rheon Labs, based in Battersea, London, offers impact protection solutions for industries ranging from cycling to the NFL. BikeBiz visited the innovative tech company, to hear from head of technology Roman Chaika and marketing manager Ben Scott


Rheon extensively tests its developments in house


The Rapha knee pads were developed with Rheon technology


Can you give us a bit of background on Rheon Labs? Chaika: In essence, we are energy control solution providers. So we look into the areas where kinetic energy needs to be controlled. In the cycling space we primarily concentrate on impact energy and we have a very big history around developing technology for any sort of helmets and protecting the brain. So the actual technology itself is strain rate sensitive, so it reacts to the rate of the energy that it sees. So during low strain rates, when you wear it on your hands or on your body, the technology is soft, flexible and malleable. The moment impact is applied it stiffens up and helps to absorb the energy on a chemical level. The higher the energy, the stiffer the technology will become to absorb those high energy impacts. The second thing is the geometry, we design them to behave differently in different directions. Why this is important for us is to control the energy from different orientations and angles, because it rarely happens that in a real world crash you will fall in just a linear fashion. There will always be an oblique element to it and obviously there is a big market now looking into crash reduction using rotational systems. What we’re advocating for is that both energies matter. Linear energy obviously matters for any likelihood of a skull fracture, it contributes a lot to the concussion as well. And then rotational energy that creates that movement of the brain inside the skull then creates the extra strain on


www.bikebiz.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68