Study of Parameters Affecting the Impact Performance of an Alloy Wheel and Noble Approach Followed to Improve the Impact Performance

A typical wheel development process involves designing a wheel based on a defined set of criteria and parameters followed by verification on CAE. The virtual testing is followed by bench level and vehicle level testing post which the design is finalized for the wheel. This paper aims to establish the learning which was accomplished for one such development process. The entire wheel development process had to be analyzed from scratch to arrive at a countermeasure for the problem. This paper will not only establish the detailed analysis employed to determine the countermeasure but also highlight its significance for the future development proposals.

The paper first establishes the failure which is followed by the detailed analysis to determine the type of failure, impact levels and the basic underlying conditions. This leads to a systematic approach of verification which encompasses the manufacturing process as well as the test methodology. The verification approach establishes the problem area, the countermeasure of which was finalized after the correlation with the actual failure conditions. Once the countermeasure was established, the wheel was again subjected to the tests performed during any development cycle. After the wheel passed all the tests successfully, the change content was finalized. Though the study was inspired on a need basis to understand a problem, it goes a long way to further fine tune the wheel development process.