Folks,
Read the entire thread. FEA is an engineering modeling tool. You can use it to say that you're standing on a spoke but if you examine the argument you wouldn't build a wheel that way (with the upper spokes tight and the bottom spokes loose). He used semantics, FEA and an arbitrary arrangement of spoke tensioning to present an interesting idea. We have all proved that we've been entertained.
2-3 engineers here have made some very good efforts at presenting the true picture but as you can see with all their mathematics, modeling and measurements they don't know 100%. But they have a pretty good idea. This is proven by the excellent bicycles that these engineering concepts have given us today.
Last edited by VenturaCyclist; 08-11-08 at 06:50 PM.
Reason: extreme onset of alzheimers