Wildboar,
I did a similar thing to this for a railway wheel recently and this is the approach I used -
Firstly I only modelled a quarter of the wheel - since it was rotationally symmetrical - there didn't seem to be any need to do any more. For your problem - you might want to do a half circle though
Next I constrained the part at the start and end points of the quadrant (or half circle) these were represented using SPCs.
Finally, I applied loads using a circular co-ordinate system around the peripheral edge of the quadrant (or half circle !) When doing this though - I realised that the loads at the SPC points had to be altered, otherwise the resulting stress contour would be unrealistic (this is obvious when the plot is viewed as the stress distribution was uneven) In my case, for the load I considered, the load at the SPCs had to be halved.
Gurmeets idea of trying a couple of different methods is a good idea and comparing the resulting animations is a good one as well though, as it makes you interpret the results and question whether or not they are right though !! There can be a tendency sometimes to believe that just because it has come out of computer - it must be right !!!
Hope this helps
sean
