Wheel Reconfiguring

[Rick Iverson]

Gents;

I have OZ five (5) spoke wheels on my RF95.

I have noticed newest editions of OZ, Technos, Jongbloed and others have modeled their spokes to be very thin. And they look hot!

Q: From an engineering as well as safety POV, can I have my OZ spokes machined as to split the five (5) spokes to reveal ten (10) spokes, and retain wheel structural integrity. This is simply cosmetic.

[DaveW]

I'd be VERY careful, studying the effect on braking and acceleration bending stresses in the spokes. If you go to 10 narrow from 5 wide (in side view) you are reducing the resistance to yielding or cracking, even if you don't actually cut out any metal except for the cut width, by a factor of 4 or more. IIRC, the bending strength in the circumferential direction is related to the side-view width^3, and if they are reduced to 1/2 as wide, the bending stresses would be ~4 times what they were before (double the # of spokes, but each 1/8 as strong).

Stress concentrations at the ends of the spokes must also be considered, since they may make the stresses a lot higher than the above.

So unless this is ONLY for show, I wouldn't do it w/o a serious stress analysis.

Of course, this depends on the spokes' actual side-view shape, which I don't know, so YMMV.

[Rick Iverson]

Dave;

Right as rain. Stock, powder coat some crazy hot color, then go racing.

I'd be VERY careful, studying the effect on braking and acceleration bending stresses in the spokes. If you go to 10 narrow from 5 wide (in side view) you are reducing the resistance to yielding or cracking, even if you don't actually cut out any metal except for the cut width, by a factor of 4 or more. IIRC, the bending strength in the circumferential direction is related to the side-view width^3, and if they are reduced to 1/2 as wide, the bending stresses would be ~4 times what they were before (double the # of spokes, but each 1/8 as strong).

Stress concentrations at the ends of the spokes must also be considered, since they may make the stresses a lot higher than the above.

So unless this is ONLY for show, I wouldn't do it w/o a serious stress analysis.

Of course, this depends on the spokes' actual side-view shape, which I don't know, so YMMV.