Fender Design

Objective:

To design the front fender of a car with Drip area, sill mount area, bumper mount, and A-pillar mount region.

What is a fender?

Fender is the US english term for the part of an automobile (vehicle body) that frames a wheel well(the fender underside).

Fender have two part i.e front fender and rear fender. Front fender is the side closer or cover compartment of the engine compartment. its major role is to avoid chipping inside the engine during motion of the wheel try to pick some small particles.

Fender is primary purpose to prevent the sand, mud, rocks, liquids and other road spray from being thrown into the air by the rotating tire.

When vehicle is moving tires pick up stones, dirt, and other then throws in all directions. Fenders are used to prevent any injuries to pedestrains by containing the motion of these particles of dirt, sand and stones, etc.

Fender design consists of 5 different mounting points.

1. Body
2. A-Pillar
3. Sill
4. Cowl
5. Drip

Design Considerartion and requirements:

The most important function is to consideration in design of fender is drip area in which we have to maintain certain gap at front and rear ends of the fender due to;

At the front end of the fender thera is going to be an head lamp, to mount headlamp and its housing, need atleast 150mm clearance from the front end of the fender.

At the rear end of the fender we will have to mount the cowl part so for the mounting of cowl part we should have the sufficient clearance of 200mm from the rear end of fender.

Manufacturing process

The manufacturing of the fender majorly involves these operations.

1.Embossing
2.Bending
3.Cutting and Blanking

Embossing

Embossing is a metal forming process for producing raised or sunken designs or relief in sheet material using matched male and female roller dies, theoretically with no change in metal thickness, or by passing sheet or a strip of metal between rolls of the desired pattern.

Bending

Metal bending is a process by which metal can be deformed when applying force to the subject, which causes it to bend at an angle and form the anticipated shape, which often results in it being in a ‘V’ or a ‘U’ shape. This is done through the application of force on a workpiece. The force on the work piece can be mechanical, pneumatic or hydraulic.

Cutting and Blanking

Cutting processes are those in which a piece of sheet metal is separated by applying a great enough shearing force to cause the material to fail. Blanking is a steel manufacturing process in which a flat, geometric shape is created by feeding a coil of sheet metal into a press and die. In this process, the blank is punched out from the large metal sheet.

Master section provided:

Design Procedure:

Inputs received as the skin surface of the fender, first developed the drip with the given master section and later developed Sill, bumper and body mounting points.

First cut outed the extra parts except the point we need,In this design mostly used law extention option in NX to extract curve in the different mounting points and trimming and sketch option used to emboss the mounting points to strength the region and to mount the region to other regions. Added the holes in it required locations for mounting purpose.

Finally using thickness option to thicken the entire sheet metal to a body with the design considerations.

Drip Area:
The area at which the fender gets attached to the engine housing through fasteners. It is the major mounting for the fender. Mountings at the drip area are designed leaving a clearance of 200mm from the back of the fender for the cowl setup. And clearance of 150mm from the front of the fender for a headlamp housing unit.

Ribs are provided at the bends to stiffen the sheet metal at that region.

A-Pillar Mounting Area:

This Mounting region is located near the cowl of the vehicle where the fender is fastened with the bottom edge of the windshield. This mounting is covered with the side rear-view mirror.

Sill Mounting Area:
The area at which the bottom of the fender gets connected to the floor near the bottom edge of the door. The Embossed sill mounting of the fender is attached with the fasteners.

Bumper Mounting Area:
The bumper mounting region is located beneath the bumper. The fender gets attached before the installation of the bumper. After fixing the fender with fasteners the bumper will cover the bumper mounting.

Baffle Mounting Area:
In this region, the baffle gets installed to the fender with the help of clips which holds the baffle with the fender along the wheel arch.

Conclusion:

Designed and developed the front fender of a car with Drip area, sill mount area, bumper mount, and A-pillar mount region with the given master section as an input.