Why Aerodynamically Designed Helmets Are Important

When a rider rides at speeds which are upwards of 80-90 or even 100 kmph, helmets tend to lift off and wobble due to wind buffeting. The wind goes around the curved top of the helmet, enters the bottom of the helmet and starts lifting it off the head.

 An aerodynamically designed helmet will have a spoiler fitted to the back of the helmet whichdirects the airflow away from the head and stops the air from curling back to enter the helmet and start lifting off the head. A well designed spoiler can create a stable helmet even at speeds well in excess of 150kmph. When we, at Tiivra, started designing our helmet, this was an important problem to solve for. We are a team made up of riders, and we are our own fiercest critics. We created the design, used Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to both design and test the helmet and ensure a laminar effect that created a downforce that kept the helmet very stable in high speed conditions.

 The spoiler angle has to be optimized for the riding triangle of the rider. In our case, we optimized the spoiler placement and angle for the more aggressive riders, who rode at 35°-65° angle. So riders on bikes such as a KTM Duke390, Royal Enfield Continental GT650, Aprilia RS457, Apache RR310, KTM RC390, Suzuki Gixxer 250, Honda CB 300, BMW G310R, Bajaj NS400, Yamaha R15, Yamaha MT15, Honda CBR250 and many such, benefit the maximum from this spoiler placement.

Additionally, vents placement also needs to be based on the riding triangle so that the air intake is the smoothest. In Tiivra helmets, the 5 vents are placed to maximise intake for riders in the aggressive riding position. And the channels / grooves in the EPS and the 4 exhaust vents are perfectly aligned to not just create one of the airiest helmets there is, but also one of the least noise one in the market.

Aerodynamics is seen as a technical feature – with not much benefit for a rider not riding on the race track. But we believe that a good aerodynamically optimized helmet makes for a very comfortable and low noise ride.