I’m no scientist but this was a fun experiment. I mapped out a loop along the Watauga River outside Valle Crucis, NC that consists of 10 miles of gravel of varying sizes and 3.5 miles of hardtop with 600 feet of elevation change.
I ran three laps back to back to back at 3 different psi settings and compared the results.
I started at 25 psi since I had been running 35 psi for a couple of days, then jumped all the way up to 35 and on the last lap brought it back to 30 psi.
The tires I used were 650b x 47 WTB Ventures.
The results were not surprising BUT it was really interesting to feel the differences over the same terrain in such short order.
I would recommend this experiment to anyone trying to dial in tire pressure.