Damping and resilience of wheels and castors

The cushioning capacity is an important component for safe and comfortable transport. It decides not only on the low degree of vibration, but also on the noise development and safe crossing of edges.

Hard wheel materials are generally more resilient. However, they have the disadvantage that they transmit shock loads, which occur on uneven floors and when crossing edges, to the transport device without being dampened.

While in the past you had to choose between soft solid rubber, medium-soft elastic rubber or hard polyamide, the range has now been supplemented by wheels with elastomer wheel treads made from polyurethane. Wheels made of these materials have high resistance values, high break resistance and have an enormous damping capacity when transporting heavy loads and unfavorable road conditions.

Dampening by the wheel works as follows: When a shock occurs, the wheel tread deforms and absorbs the shock. The softer the wheel, the greater the compression set. Soft wheel bandages behave reversible when running, ie they form

return to their original form with further rotations without any permanent change. The wheel tread behaves in the same way after a long period of standing and subsequent driving.

The duration of the reshaping into the original state depends on the elasticity of the wheel tread. For example, a solid rubber wheel has very low elasticity. The recovery therefore takes longer than, for example, with thermoplastically processed polyurethane wheels. These wheel treads are highly elastic and have a short recovery time.

In the field of cast polyurethanes, highly elastic wheel coverings are also available. These wheel materials, in conjunction with the stable solid aluminum core, enable the best damping capacity with low rolling resistance, high load-bearing capacity, high resilience and low wear.

On our product pages you will find information about the elasticity of the respective wheel and the associated reshaping behavior.

The diagram compares the recovery behavior of different wheel materials. The curves determined are based on short-term impact loads (60% of the respective wheel load capacity) under the same conditions as impact load, wheel bearings, wheel diameter and road surface.