Challenges in Weight Reduction and Fatigue Life Enhancement in Wheel Design

The objective of this project is to reduce the weight of a wheel without affecting its primary functions such as fitment, air flow and fatigue life, the design is made with the concept of variable thickness, meaning reducing thickness wherever the stresses are low and also addressing the failures in the field. However, requirement of a prototype makes the validation process laborious, costly and time consuming. Finite Element Method (FEM) has evolved as a resourceful tool for analyzing various components under a variety of operating conditions. It is being used not only to predict the critical points bearing the highest stress in a wheel, but also to predict its fatigue life. The present study focuses on the design of variable thickness disc and validation of the same using FEM for air flow analysis and Rig testing. The analysis was carried out on existing and proposed designs and the salient features were compared.