Originally Posted by
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.