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I will admit, I was hoping for more from you.
Here we go. Tension structures have mechanical properties
that you might not expect from floppy rubber, fabric and
steel bands.
They can react tension, and they can react compression.
The tension structure we know and love as the pneumatic tire
has two ways of reacting ground forces at the hub.
Where the hub makes a strong connection to the tire case,
the two dimensional stress field of the surface of the inflated
tire has a particular pattern when reacting the ground force:
it is an enhanced tension region around roughly the top half
of its area, and a compression region in the lower half.
For a tire case not strongly connected to the wheel hub, the field
of compression is largely confined to the lower half of the case.
It is not overwhelmingly necessary that the tire's case deflect
in some particular way at the hub. The structure has stiffness
due to inflation.
The tire's footprint area transmits internal air pressure,
as does the belt bending force and the sidewall bending force.
A decent reading of the product of footprint area and
internal air pressure should provide a large fraction of the
total ground reaction force, in non-pathological cases.
Disappointing, but that's all there is.
Brian Whatcott Altus OK Eureka!