Wheel Arch Challenge

European standards for Fender Design:

The wheel Arch area of the fender is usually designed as a cover or sheild over the tyre along its perimeter to stop any debris or stones , dirt, sand, snow etc. from getting thrown into the vehicle/ BIW area as well as outside the vehicle and onto other vehicles or pedestrians on the road.

The European regulation requires a pre determined clearance or a minimum distance of 10mm. to be maintained between the Fender (Front Quarter Panel) and the respective tyre at particular points(5 points/Sections to be exact) along the tyre profile as shown below:

1. A horizontal and vertical Axis is drawn at the wheel centre and the respective intersection points on the fender are noted. The vertical axis intersection point is labelled SA.
2. Similar references are drawn at 30 degree forward an at 50 degree backward of the normal and are named SB and SC respectively.
3. An intercept of 150mm is drawn perpendicular to the horizontal axis and the normal from that point on the fender gives us SE.
4. The midpoint of the arc cut by SC and SE is considered to give out section SD.
5. The Clearance ‘L’ as shown above is the crucial term here.

The objective of the current project is to test whether the given fender and tyre specimen is eligible to pass the European Regulation of Fender Design criteria or not. Hence the above shown steps are followed.

Step 1:

A sketch is drawn to get the reference points A, B, C, D, E.

Step 2:

With the help of Law Extension command these Lines are converted into strips / Surfaces with the width equal to the tyre profile.

These strips are the extruded along their lengths such that the clearance can be calculated using the measure distance option in analysis section.

Step 3:

The Distance / Clearance is measured at the perticular Points A, B, C, D, E to get the results.

Section SB:

Section SA:

Section SC:

Section SD:

Section SE:

As seen in the screenshots it is clear that:

• Except Section SB all the sections have a clearance value < 10mm.
• The Clearance or Minimum distance between the tyre profile and the fender is 0 at section SC i.e.the tyre might make contact with the fender if the vertical wheel travel allows it to,which is not acceptable by any regulations.
• The clearance value at sections SD and SE is termed negative as the positive distance is on the other side of the fender i.e. the tire is outside the fender.

Hence it is proven by the above made points tha the fender design fails to pass the Europeane regulations for fender design.

The Wheel Arch length is:1041.5129mm.

The Wheel Arch Area is:24432.9334mme2