More About True Temper's VERUS 4130 Steel

Stress relief is an important concept in all metals. During the manufacturing process of bicycle tubing, there is a lot of physical working of the tubing, plus various thermal changes. This can lead to internal stresses in the material. Local areas in compression balancing against areas in tension appear. These stresses are created when the physical and thermal working has caused the crystal structure to be locally distorted. The negative effect on bicycle tubing has to do with the fatigue life of the tube (which has a big effect on your safety!). As you ride your bike, the stresses created by every pedaling load you apply and every road shock are ADDED to the internal stresses!

Internal stresses lead to shortened fatigue life for a steel frame only when the combined external load stresses plus internal stresses rise above a stress level referred to as the "fatigue threshold". [For steels, this is about one half of the yield strength. Loads causing stresses below this level do not cause fatigue cycles. (Unlike aluminum, where every push on the pedals adds a fatigue cycles)] Stress Relieving, which removes these internal stresses, is a very important, if unexciting, feature about these True Temper VERUS bicycle tubes. [As the yield strengths increase in True Temper's other Series, the effect of internal stresses is proportionally less.]

But, you say, having absorbed all the hype, "Doesn't low strength mean high weight?" Not necessarily. Properly designed for real world use, bicycle framesets are engineered to have a certain amount of rigidity. The correct stiffness creates a feeling of liveliness and responsiveness. (Too little rigidity creates a soft, dead feeling ride and handling suffers.) It turns out that, by the time you make a steel bike stiff enough that it feels great, you have used enough steel in the tube walls to lower the stresses to where you don't need a high strength steel to withstand the loads and still have a good safety factor.