Design And Structural Analysis Of Aluminum Alloy Wheel

Wheel is one of the most important parts in the driving system of automobile. It transfers the force and moment between the car and the ground. It greatly affects the security and reliability of the car. Furthermore, the wheel also plays an important role in the car's decoration. We used to design wheels by experience. But it has many disadvantages, such as the blindness in design, the long period, the high cost and so on. The enterprises want exigent to improve the way because of the more and more intense competition. The CAD as well as the FEA technology in this paper is the perfect method to solve above problems.The conception of "Industrial Design" is applied to design the modeling of the wheel. The methods and skills in the presentation of thoughts in modeling design combine with the dimension optimization and the shape optimization tie the engineering technology and the presentation of artistic molding in perfectly. It synthetically presents the wheel's capability , structural and the artistic molding.The structural strength is the key point to describe the quality of a wheel. Since the cornering test fails more frequently among the three, this paper applies CAE technology to analysis the structural strength under the condition of cornering test. The model of the aluminum alloy wheel classified as 16 x 6.57 is built. Static stress analysis is carried out to study the influence of bolt pre-tension, centrifugal force and the cornering force to the structural as well as the distributing rule of stress and strain. To validate the result of CAE, the stress test is carried out. Compared with the collected stress, it proved that the error between them is just 4%. So the analysis model is correct and the result is credible.The fatigue wreck is the main breakage of wheel. It is important to predict the fatigue life of a wheel on its designed. The maximum and minimum stress of the key point decides the life of the wheel. Study the wheel's dynamic response under the rotation moment in dynamic analysis, in order to get the risk point with the maximal stress and stress range. The fatigue life prediction of the dangerous point is carried out with the method of nominal stress with modified Miner principle and the local stress-strain method with Smith-Waston-topper damage formula. Comparing with thereal test, it proved that the life prediction by the latter is closer to the true. This means that the local stress-strain method is more suitable for the wheel's life prediction.The research of modeling design structural optimization -. strength analysis and fatigue life prediction of aluminum alloy wheel possess versatility and practical value and obtain the huge economy benefit and engineering value in the project with Wanfeng Auto company.