A Study of the Strength of Spoked Wheels (The 4th Report)

Abstract

Theoretical and experimental studies on the stress in a spoked wheel produced by a horizontal load have been made in the second and third reports. In succesion to these studies, the writers made a theoretical study on the stress produced by a vertical load in a spoked wheel. Pippard-Baker and Kreissig studied this problem already, but their reports are not complete and we cannot find how much load acts on the each spoke, that is, the strength of spoked wheels under veritical load has never been made clear yet. From this point of view, in this report they introduced theoretical equations for the stresses produced by vertical load in each part of the spoked wheels, In these equations, the tire and the rim are treated as rings. That is to say that the tire is a ring on which a load acts from outside and the rim is also a ring on which the reaction force acts through the spokes from inside. and the spokes are treated as the beams on which the tensile force, the bending moment and the shearing force act at the boss and their rim-side roots. Numerical examples for the wheels of railway rolling-stock under vertical load will be shown also in this report.