Originally Posted by
HillRider
This makes no sense. What you are saying is that less material is stronger. A 2 mm spoke has a cross section of 3.24 mm^2, a 1.8 mm spoke has a cross section of 2.54 mm^2. So the smaller cross section is stronger? Perhaps the tensile strength numbers are really given in kgf/mm^2 and the butted spokes are stronger per mm^2 due to cold working.
No. Less material isn’t “stronger”, it’s more elastic. If you look at the charts for the straight gauge spokes you can see that a 1.8mm spoke is breaks at lower force than a 2.0mm spoke, which is to be expected. But by thinning out the middle of the spoke, the spoke becomes more elastic and overall takes more force to break than a 2.0mm spoke. Add in a thicker head and it takes even more to break that head with a thin middle section that stretches.