In-Plane Design of Non-Circular Triangulated Tensile Spoke Wheels

This paper presents a new in-plane design of non-circular triangulated tensile spoke wheels with two perpendicular symmetry axes, like those used for roofing big sports stadiums, as well as a procedure to define such design. The proposed procedure describes how to define the in-plane shape and the necessary pre-stressing so that the outer ring behaves like a funicular polygon which has equal-length sides and is uniformly compressed. All in all, this procedure solves the problem of non-circularity of a triangulated spoke wheel by equalising the cross section sizing conditions of the outer ring to the sizing conditions that a circular structure would have.