Rythmic Tension Cycles in Wheels

This is the second of three short videos of technical presentations about bicycle wheels that I gave at seminars in February 2019. This video is about rhythmic tension cycles of spokes when wheels are rotating under load. It runs about twelve minutes. You may make comments to Bill Mould directly at [e-mail].

[@davidcroxton8306]

An accurate measure of how much the rim shrinks as the total spoke tension increases with spoke count and tension would be interesting. Also a wheel built with even spoke tension is rarely true mainly because the join in the rim is never perfect. The addition of lateral loads on rear wheels would give some really interesting data. Great to see good data and analysis.

[@ajameslee]

This was a really neat video.

[@gmatochautube]

Thanks - I've suspected for a long time that crossing, or interlacing, spokes didn't have a significant effect on the performance of the wheel. This has been anecdotally supported by high-end straight pull wheels commonly being built without interlaced spokes. Thanks for providing the data and engineering analysis to support that.

[@BillMouldWheels]

Thank you for your supportive comment!

[@johnbarron4265]

I'm curious what effect wheel spoke count has on the drop in tension of the lower most spoke. Surely having the spokes closer together will cause the adjacent spokes to share in the tension drop to a greater extent.