Effect of Steel Wheel Disc Hat Profile and Vent Hole Shape on Fatigue Life in Cornering Test

Automotive steel wheel is a critical component for human safety. For validating steel wheel various tests will be performed at component and vehicle level. Cornering test performed at vehicle level is one of the tests, where wheel will be validated for high cornering loads. Cornering test performed at vehicle level consists of three different events i.e., rotations of vehicle in track1, rotations of vehicle track 2 and rotations of vehicle in track3. As wheel will experience different loading in each of the events of cornering test, correlating the virtual Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with physical test is quite challenging. If in FEA we can predict the damage and life very near to the physical validation, we can create a safe wheel for high cornering loads without any test concerns. Vent hole shape and Hat depth are two important aspects in wheel disc design. Vent hole shape and size will influence the heat dissipation of braking. Hat depth of disc will influence the stiffness of wheel disc design. The present study focuses on correlating the FEA of wheel vehicle level cornering test with physical validation and effect of Vent hole shape and Hat depth on fatigue life. Wheel disc with 3 different Vent hole shapes and 4 different Hat depths are analyzed in FEA, effect of Vent hole shape and Hat depth on fatigue life is noted. This study helps in designing a steel wheel disc with desirable Vent hole shape and required Hat depth which will sustain high cornering loads.