>>1344704>>1344704I'm sorry, but going to convert to Imperial here as I'm an American.
The ground pressure of a bicycle physically can’t be significantly higher than the static pressure of the of the tire, If you have two tires running at 20psi, each supporting 115lbs (200lb Rider+30lb bike, Leaning toward heavier side of things ) you’ll have a contact patch of 5.75in^2 per tire and a ground pressure of ~20psi, there’s some pressure increase due to the tube deforming but it’s probabaly not significant enough to matter here, your figure of 35 psi (245kPa) is ridiculous for a bike on anything other than solid road, most people that are serious will have tire pressures in the neighborhood of 5-10psi (30-70 kPa) some even lower. Now determining the ground pressure of a human is significantly harder as it’s not constant like a wheel, there’s a spike as the foot hits the ground and it’s not on all of the contact area at any single time, however your value of 120kPa (17psi) seems to be pretty well accepted although it stems from some landscaping book from the early 2000s and I’ve got no way to know how they came to that. Now what I hope to show by this is pressure alone isn’t a valid way to look at the issue since a properly set up bike will have lower ground pressure than a human walking but your anecdotal evidence would say otherwise, the real damage occurs when the tire moves forward and slips or when your heel/toe displaces soil, hence why the studies look at the sediment runoff from the test trails rather than any factor related to the setup of the bike/hiker, trails get fucked up if they’re not set up properly regardless of user.
This is way too long, I may have autism...
