Originally Posted by
Road Fan
Elasticity of a spoke is like that of a frame tube, where an increase in OD has a lot of leverage in the equation for stiffness. For frame tubes the stiffness increases with the square of the OD. If the diameter increases by 10%, the stiffness increases by 1.1*1.1 = 1.21 = 21%!
That's frame tube stiffness against bending. The only significant spoke stiffness is against elongation, which is a simple linear function of cross-sectional area.