Bicycle Wheels
A conventional bicycle wheel consists of a thin rim kept under high compressive stress by the (roughly normal) inward pull of a large number of spokes. It can be considered as a loaded column that has been bent into a circle. As such, if spoke tension is increased beyond a safe level, the wheel spontaneously fails into a characteristic saddle shape (sometimes called a "taco" or a "pringle") like a three-dimensional Euler column. This is normally a purely elastic deformation and the rim will resume its proper plane shape if spoke tension is reduced slightly.
Read more about this topic: Buckling
Famous quotes containing the words bicycle and/or wheels:
“I well recall my horror when I heard for the first time, of a journalist who had laid in a pair of what were then called bicycle pants and taken to golf; it was as if I had encountered a studhorse with his hair done up in frizzes, and pink bowknots peeking out of them. It seemed, in some vague way, ignominious, and even a bit indelicate.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“You utilitarians, you too love everything useful only as a vehicle of your inclinations—you too really find the noise of its wheels intolerable?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)