Quote:
Originally Posted by pattonme
My intuition is that the ridge is there deliberately to spread load and act as a spine. without it you get heavy concentration of stress at the hoop/spoke interface. FWIW the automotive "standard" pothole (defined loosely) for wheel impacts is something like 3G up and 2-3G rearward.
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Hey, no joke. Can you link to a reference for that? Interested for some of my extracurriculars and that would be a good read.
Looking at how small that ridge is, my gut tells me that it's there mostly for spooning tires onto and off the rim, but I'm not qualified to make that statement with any amount of authority at all.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sharky nrk
LOL, you just gave me some Pro/E Mechanica flashback tremors  
While it may not be possible to accurately model the resulting stress changes due to the modification of the wheel, it is a valid point that there is certainly a large chunk of risk someone takes when making such a modification. The change may not be significant in terms of reliability but it is essentially untested and unproven until it is put through its paces. And should it choose to be significant, the results could be less than enjoyable. |
I've used Solidworks and ANSYS for analysis on simple parts. I'm learning Creo (continuation of Pro E) and it's the same pain in the kiester. I wouldn't attempt to do optimization on a wheel because it's complicated and I don't know all the forces acting on it. I'm not qualified to tell anyone else where they can cut their wheels.
Just remember that before we used computers, race teams survived (or sometimes not) by modifying their parts and testing to failure. I'd bet there's a high enough safety factor on those wheels to trim the lip off... but I'm not going to bet someone else's life on it. Nor would I do it myself. If I'm going to mess with wheel weight, I'm probably going to do it with light weight tires or expensive aftermarket wheels or fitting wheels from another bike.