29 Wheels

A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle which is one of the six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction with axles, allow heavy objects to be moved easily facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Wheels are also used for other purposes, such as a ship's wheel, steering wheel, potter's wheel and flywheel.

Aristotle's wheel paradox is a paradox or problem appearing in the Greek work Mechanica, traditionally attributed to Aristotle. It states as follows: A wheel is depicted in two-dimensional space as two circles. Its larger, outer circle is tangential to a horizontal surface, while the smaller, inner one has the same center and is rigidly affixed to the larger. Assuming the larger circle rolls without slipping for one full revolution, the distances moved by both circles are the same. The distance travelled by the larger circle is equal to its circumference, but for the smaller it is greater than its circumference, thereby creating a paradox.

The artillery wheel was a nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century style of wagon, gun carriage, and automobile wheel. Rather than having its spokes mortised into a wooden nave (hub), it has them fitted together in a keystone fashion with miter joints, bolted into a two-piece metal nave. Its tyre is shrunk onto the rim in the usual way but it may also be bolted on for security.

A bicycle wheel is a wheel, most commonly a wire wheel, designed for a bicycle. A pair is often called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready built "off the shelf" performance-oriented wheels.

The Bulleid Firth Brown wheel (BFB) was a locomotive wheel developed for the Southern Railway in the late 1930s. It was a disc wheel, in contrast to the usual spoked wheels in general use on British railways. The wheel was designed by Oliver Bulleid and developed by the steel company Firth Brown of Sheffield.

A wheelwright is a craftsman who builds or repairs wooden wheels. The word is the combination of "wheel" and the word "wright", as in shipwright and arkwright. This occupational name became the English surname Wright. It also appears in surnames like Cartwright and Wainwright. It corresponds with skilful metal workers being called Smith.

A caster is an undriven wheel that is designed to be attached to the bottom of a larger object to enable that object to be moved.

Cat exercise wheel is a large wheel that a cat either runs on or walks on for exercise or play. A cat wheel looks like a large hamster wheel: the wheel turns from the weight of the cat. A wheel can be used for enrichment or to exercise high energy indoor cats.The wheels are generally 120 CM in diameter, with a depth of 25 cm. There are several pioneering brands, such as Cat One Fast and Tirica Wheels.

A centreless wheel is a wheel where the force is delivered in the perimeter of the wheel rather than in the centre, there's a variety of centreless wheels with their own characteristics including the hubless wheel, spokeless wheel, orbital wheel and rim-rider.

The term custom wheel refers to the wheels of a vehicle which have either been modified from the vehicle manufacturer's standard or have replaced the manufacturer's standard.

A hamster wheel or running wheel is an exercise device used primarily by hamsters and other rodents, but also by other cursorial animals when given the opportunity. Most of these devices consist of a runged or ridged wheel held on a stand by a single or pair of stub axles. Hamster wheels allow rodents to run even when their space is confined. The earliest dated use of the term "hamster wheel", located by the Oxford English Dictionary, is in a 1949 newspaper advertisement.

The Ljubljana Marshes Wheel is a wooden wheel that was found in the Ljubljana Marshes some 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, in 2002. Radiocarbon dating, performed in the VERA laboratory in Vienna, showed that it is approximately 5,150 years old, which makes it the oldest wooden wheel yet discovered. It was discovered by a team of Slovene archeologists from the Ljubljana Institute of Archaeology, a part of the Research Center at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, under the guidance of Anton Velušček.

The Mecanum wheel is an omnidirectional wheel design for a land-based vehicle to move in any direction. It is sometimes called the Swedish wheel or Ilon wheel after its inventor, Bengt Erland Ilon (1923-2008), who came up with the concept while working as an engineer with the Swedish company Mecanum AB, and patented it in the United States on November 13, 1972.

Omni wheels or poly wheels, similar to Mecanum wheels, are wheels with small discs around the circumference which are perpendicular to the turning direction. The effect is that the wheel can be driven with full force, but will also slide laterally with great ease. These wheels are often employed in holonomic drive systems.

Paper car wheels were composite wheels of railway carriages, made from a wrought iron or steel rim bolted to an iron hub with an interlayer of laminated paper. The center was made of compressed paper held between two plate-iron disks. Their ability to damp rail/wheel noise resulted in a quiet and smooth ride for the passengers of North American Pullman dining and sleeping cars.

The pedrail wheel is a type of all-terrain wheel developed in the late 19th and early 20th century by Londoner Bramah Joseph Diplock. It consists of a series of "feet" connected to pivots on a wheel. As the wheel travels, pressure exerted by springs within it increases the number of feet in contact with the ground, thus reducing ground pressure and allowing the wheel to negotiate obstacles and uneven ground.

The rim is the "outer edge of a wheel, holding the tire". It makes up the outer circular design of the wheel on which the inside edge of the tire is mounted on vehicles such as automobiles. For example, on a bicycle wheel the rim is a large hoop attached to the outer ends of the spokes of the wheel that holds the tire and tube. In cross-section, the rim is deep in the center and shallow at the outer edges, thus forming a "U" shape that supports the bead of the tire casing.

A scroll wheel is a wheel used for scrolling. The term usually refers to such wheels found on computer mice. It is often made of hard plastic with a rubbery surface, based around an internal rotary encoder. It is usually located between the left and right mouse buttons and is positioned perpendicular to the mouse surface.

A scrollerwheel is a mechanical device composed of a number of rollers and connective bands under tension, which wrap around and weave between the rollers forming a self-supporting cluster possessing a central roller. The cluster of rollers is bound by the connective bands in such a way that the static friction between the rollers and bands prevent the rollers from slipping as they roll and orbit the central roller. Scrollerwheels are related in operational principle to rolamite linear bearings, and like them, they display only rolling friction, and not the kinetic friction inherent in most mechanical bearings.

A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel, connecting the hub with the round traction surface.

A square wheel is a wheel that, instead of being circular, has the shape of a square. While literal square wheels exist, a more common use is as a idiom meaning feeling bad and naive.

A tape transport is the collection of parts of a magnetic tape player or recorder that move the tape and play or record it. Transport parts include the head, capstan, pinch roller, tape pins, and tape guide. The tape transport as a whole is called the transport mechanism.

The tri-star is a novel wheel design—originally by Robert and John Forsyth, assigned to Lockheed in 1967—in which three wheels are arranged in an upright triangle with two on the ground and one above them. If either of the wheels in contact with the ground gets stuck, the whole system rotates over the obstruction.

The Tweel is an airless tire design developed by the French tire company Michelin. Its significant advantage over pneumatic tires is that the Tweel does not use a bladder full of compressed air, and therefore cannot burst, leak pressure, or become flat. Instead, the Tweel's hub is connected to the rim via flexible polyurethane spokes which fulfil the shock-absorbing role provided by the compressed air in a traditional tire.

Wheel construction refers to the making of wheels. Construction of wire-spoked wheels is generally termed as wheelbuilding, so wheel construction refers to construction of non-wire wheels, e.g. wheels of cars and other heavier vehicles. Wheels are constructed in a wide variety of designs using different materials, but in the early 21st century, aluminum and steel are most often used, with steel-made wheels being heavier and more durable than aluminum wheels. The performance of a wheel depends on the alloy and technique used to construct it. A wheel is usually made up of a rim, which connects with the tire, and a central disc, also known as the disc or spider, which connects the wheel to the vehicle. Wheels are usually of two types: semi-drop center (SDC), used in trucks, and drop center (DC), used in other vehicles.

A wheelwright is a craftsman who builds or repairs wooden wheels. The word is the combination of "wheel" and the word "wright", as in shipwright and arkwright. This occupational name became the English surname Wright. It also appears in surnames like Cartwright and Wainwright. It corresponds with skilful metal workers being called Smith.

Wire wheels, wire-spoked wheels, tension-spoked wheels, or "suspension" wheels are wheels whose rims connect to their hubs by wire spokes. Although these wires are generally stiffer than a typical wire rope, they function mechanically the same as tensioned flexible wires, keeping the rim true while supporting applied loads. The term suspension wheel should not be confused with vehicle suspension.

The wobbly-web wheel is a form of metal disc wheel where the disc is 'wobbled' into spokes. This provides a stiffer, lightweight wheel.