Originally Posted by
a77impala
I don't think there is any more stress on a wheel when you are cornering than when you are going straight. When you lean into a corner the wheel is still
pressing straight down on the road surface. I used to have a Harley with a sidecar, now that was hard on spokes because the wheels were always
at a 90 degree angle to the road so when cornering there was a lot of side stress placed on the spokes.
I'm not sure what you mean by "straight down". We have to draw two independent force vectors. One is downward force of gravity and the other lateral-force from cornering. The resultant vector is in-line with the plane of the bike if the rider stays centered. At 1g of cornering, this vector would be at 45-degrees. The force on the spokes however, is still in-line with the hub & rim.
However, there are numerous cases where the rider's body is NOT in-line with the plane of the bike. Most noticeable for me is in sprints where I'm rocking the bike back & forth. However, my weight is still roughly centered between a line between the tyre's contact patches. This results in my weight pushing down on the wheels at an angle. Laterally soft wheels
DO bend and the result is the rim rubbing on the brake-pads. I've found that 32/36h wide box-section rims combined with straight 14ga spokes and high-flange hubs (with wide flange-spacing) gives the most laterally-stiff wheels. The numbers of crosses doesn't make a significant difference laterally, just in torsion to resist the incredibly massive amounts of torque a human actually generates at the back hub.