View Single Post
Old 02-24-2012, 09:31 AM   #166
glatt
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 27,717
I'm no mechanical engineer, but I think there's some tensegrity action going on, where even the horizontal spokes are helping to support the weight of the car by holding the rim in a circular shape so the forces can be transferred down to the ground.

Maybe tensegrity is the wrong word to describe it, but it's a similar phenomenon, where all the parts of the system work together.
glatt is offline   Reply With Quote