A spoke is cold formed from wire that is (at least DT) as hard and
work hardened as it will get. The process after tensioning a wheel
does not further harden the spokes. The wire is straightened by
running it through staggered rollers in X and Y directions. The
rollers have, like a degausser, ever diminishing excursions. This
gets rid of the natural curl left from being shipped in a coil. If
the wire was not curled before winding it would be a dangerous weapon
on the spool because if the end got loose, all hell would break loose,
making a huge birds nest.
Anyway, the straightening process leaves the spoke with internal
stresses that are well balanced and relatively low. I haven't given
this a lot of thought but it seems that if there were a large number
of rollers, the stress might approach zero. After this process, the
spoke gets its head forged on is cut to length, threaded and, and
lastly its head is crudely but accurately knocked to one side to
produce the elbow.
The threads, head, and elbow, contain metal that went beyond yield as
well as metal that did not.
The metal in these zones is stressed one
part against another, one wanting to return to the condition before or
during forming, and the other to the formed shape. On lacing the
spokes into a wheel, the elbow is additionally bent (brought to yield)
and upon tensioning this stress remains at or reaches the yield point
it if it wasn't already there. The threads, that have locked in
stresses (all stresses are ultimately tension and compression) is
selectively stressed at the contact points with the nipple thread and
in tension in the core that already was in tension because thread
rolling stretches this portion of the spoke slightly.
The result is that a freshly built wheel has spokes locations where
stress is guaranteed to be at the yield point. If used this way, the
cyclic load with each wheel revolution
will cause spokes to fail in
fatigue at these high stress points. The load on the wheel only
unloads spokes but because the spoke is operating up to the yield
point, it cannot withstand many stress cycles. The greater the load
(unloading) the sooner it will fail because when operating close to
the yield stress a metal cannot survive. Only the lightest riders who
ride smooth roads might not experience failures.
The purpose of stress relieving is to relax these high stress points
in the spokes. The purpose is not to bed the spokes into the hub.
Bedding in has usually already occurred sufficiently for practical
purposes during tensioning.
By stretching each spoke with a strong
grasp, its tension can be temporarily increased by 50 to 100%.
Because a spoke operates at about 1/3 its yield stress, this operation
has little to no effect on the spoke as a whole.
Stress relieving
affects only the microscopic zones of the spoke that are at high
stress (near or at the yield stress). By stretching these zones and
relaxing the load afterward, the margin to yield is as much as the
overload or more.
A whimpy grasp of the spokes during stress relieving is close to
worthless and dropping the wheel, bending it in a partially opened
drawer, pressing on the rim with the hub on the floor and the like is
as close to useless as you can get. The only method that I have seen,
but do not recommend, is walking on the wheel while wearing tennis
shoes and carefully stepping on each pair of crossed spokes. The
problem with this is that it bends the rim and it is difficult to be
sure each spoke gets a good stretch.
IT IS STRESS RELIEVING! At least that's what I am referring to by the
term.
Jobst Brandt