Wheel Durability and Life Improvement - Valve Hole Position Optimization in Commercial Vehicle Wheel Using Segmental Loading Conditions

In Automotive, Steel wheels are exponentially replaced by Aluminum wheels because of its feather light, agile performance and better acceleration. One such widely used size is 11.75 x 22.5 wheels for trucks and trailer segment. During the design stage of 11.75 x 22.5 wheel, the valve hole was placed away from the stress concentration zone to reduce the stress on the holes and also the design was validated through all conventional wheel rim testing methodologies (Like CFT, RFT and Bi-axial) and the wheel passed all the test requirements. During the field trials, failures were observed on the valve holes, despite of this hole was away from stress concentration region. Understood from the field trials that, the regular testing was not able to simulate the real field conditions for this particular size and changed the boundary condition in our FEA to simulate the actual conditions. After changing the boundary conditions, we could able to observe more stress in valve hole. To strengthen the hole, moved the hole close to stress concentration region and observed reduction in stress due to the new boundary conditions. Also observed that the environment temperature plays a major role on the valve hole O-ring material, so to avoid the metal to metal contact at the elevated temperature, changed the O ring material to withstand the high temperature. This new design showed better results than the previous one and passed all the standard test requirements and field trials.