A Study on Structural Fatigue Durability of Automotive Wheel at Driving

The wheels cause mainly fatigue fractures in the situations of applying the random loads. Also, the wheels must pass, without fail, many kinds of performance tests before being used. The fatigue experiments are very important tests among the many kinds of performance tests. In this research, the fatigue tests were realized regarding the wheels through simulations. And, through the fatigue lifetime predictions according to the stresses of the three kinds of aluminum alloy wheels, the stabilities and the strengths of the aluminum wheels were analyzed. With regard to the analysis results, Type 1 showed the most fatigue lifetime and they were in the order of Type 2 and Type 3. Regarding the maximum frequency of the amplitude stress and the average stress and with regard to the Type 1 model, we were able to see that the section of the stress condition in which the frequency occurs was small, thereby being the most stable regarding the fatigue load. And it shows the instability because the section of the stress condition gets larger in the order of the Type 2 model and the Type 3 model. Also, although the Type 1 model is the most stable regarding fatigue, a 1.96% damage possibility is shown in the neighborhood of 300MPa of average stress and 200MPa. Thereby, it is possible to predict that, regarding the Type 1 model, the probability of damage is high in such a stress condition.