burnthesheep wrote:
Would a trispoke or flatter disc tend to be better at low yaw because the “spoke” essentially presents zero exposure to frontal area? Looking head on at a spoked wheel you see, well, spokes. Head on at a trispoke you see nothing but hub and tire.
In terms of translational drag those two differ. Discs have almost all their benefit at higher yaw, though can marginally beat all other wheels at zero yaw. Tri-spokes, on the other hand, tend to suffer at higher yaw relative to modern deep aero wheels.
In terms of "watts to spin" I'd speculate that drag is largely independent of yaw angle, and mostly just a function of the rotational velocity of the wheel. But yes, discs and tri-spokes would have fewer watts-to-spin than spoked wheels.