Randy wrote:

In PA the most common thing I see across a contruction ditch is 1"
plate, I guess they fiqure that's good for a 80,000 tractor trailer.

The key is load per axle. And not the overall weight. I guess you to do have
a limit in the range of 8 tons / axle.


The question is,if he tries it, what is the max bow the plate can take
without springing back?

Again, it's difficult to calculate (by hand). The common method nowadays
would be finite elements method. Feed your CAD with the data and pray it
has a FEM-module.


Nick
--
The lowcost-DRO:
http://www.yadro.de