Loads on wheels and castors
Drop and impact loads on wheels and castors
Drop and impact loads can, in some circumstances, have destructive effects on wheels and castors. It is therefore important to factor in certain eventualities in advance.
For example, uneven floors, edges or floor transitions can lead to brief overloads on the moving wheels and castors. Falling loads or the placing down of the transport equipment by a forklift also act directly on the wheels or castors. If these forces are not taken into account when selecting the castors, deformation or even breakage of the components can occur in use.
You can counter these difficult-to-calculate risks in the following ways:
- Increase wheel diameter
- Increase load capacity reserves
- Increase damping capacity
Example:
- Swivel castor with top plate fixing
- Wheel diameter 150 mm
- Load capacity 450 kg
- Shore hardness 90° A (hard)
- non-elastic (low damping)
You are planning to push the load limit to the maximum, and your floor has significant unevenness - greater than or equal to 5 % of the wheel diameter of 150 mm - or you are transporting on mixed floor conditions. For safety reasons, we recommend choosing a series with a softer wheel tread and a larger wheel diameter straight away.
Our recommendation:
- Swivel castor with top plate fixing
- Wheel diameter 160 mm
- Load capacity 500 kg
- Shore hardness 75° A (soft to medium-hard)
- slightly elastic (good damping)
Loads caused by lateral forces
Lateral forces can occur in various ways, for example through sideways pushing of the transport equipment, direct impact at castor height (for example by a loaded pallet truck) or by tilting a transport device.
When lateral forces occur, a stable wheel and a stable fork head in the housing are very important. Castors from castors-direct.com are robust and stable by design. Damage caused by lateral forces has therefore rarely been an issue so far.
In the replacement castors segment - replacing old castors with castors from castors-direct.com - we encounter this issue somewhat more frequently. We repeatedly find that lateral forces were not considered and that previously inexpensive, lower-quality wheels and castors were used that are not able to withstand lateral forces.
The high manufacturing quality of castors from castors-direct.com ensures that the occasional occurrence of brief lateral forces does not cause total failure. As a general rule, even with our quality level, the fewer lateral forces act on the wheels and castors, the longer their service life.