In article <[email hidden]>,
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:Where did the tension in the bottm spokes go? Did it evaporate, or
is it
Quoted message said:being used to resist another force to maintain equilibrium?
Ben
it has been transferred to the upper spokes...duh
Perhaps you would care to explain the mechanism by which you
believe a load would get transferred to the upper spokes, and how
such a mechanism wouldn't be balanced around the whole wheel. The spokes
at the top of the wheel, being far detached from the load affected
zone, are only aware of the compression force in the rim, and the
radius of the curve it follows. If you start at the top of the
wheel, and look at consecutive rim segments down the sides to the end
of the load affected zone, this same compression is present all the
way, the spokes being essentially orthogonal to the compression and
unable to contribute any significant changes to it magnitude.
Rim compression being uniform, the tension in all the free spokes
outside of the load affected zone will be uniform, so any tension
change you see in the top half of the wheel, will also be present in
the bottom half of the wheel, cancelling the contribution of all but the
4 or so spokes opposite the load affected region.
Those four spokes at the top of the wheel see an increased
tension from wheel loading, yes, from the marginal increase in rim
compression. But this increased rim compression applies to the spokes
in the load affected zone too. On the other hand, look at the radius
of the rim at the top of the wheel and in the load affected zone.
While the top of the wheel retains essentially the same curvature as
an unloaded wheel, the wheel loading acts to flatten the rim in the
load affected zone. This flattening of the rim is reflected in a
reduction in spoke tension, a far greater reduction than the trifling
increases seen in spokes through the rest of the wheel.
The forces applied to the wheel are at the hub and at the
ground. Why should those forces not be taken up by the very spokes
that go from one point of application straight to the other? Suggesting
the force somehow goes through the rim around to the far side spokes and
then to the hub from there is needlessly complicated, and begs for Occam's
Razor.
-Luns
