Fender Design Challenge

DESIGN A FENDER USING NX CAD

Objective: The objective is to Design a Front Fender from the given Class A Surfacing with Drip Area, Bumper Mount, Cowl Mount, Sill Mount, and A-Pillar Mount.

Introduction:

• Fender is the US English term for the part of an automobile (vehicle body) that frames a wheel well (the fender underside).
• Its primary purpose is to prevent 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 and others and hurl them in all directions. Fenders are basically present to prevent any injuries to pedestrians and contain the motion of these particles.
• Most passenger automobiles have four fenders, one over each wheel. For vehicles with a narrow car body that exposes the tire, the fender is an exposed curve over the top of the tire. For wide body vehicles that cover the tire, the fender forms the wheel well surrounding the tire, and is not directly visible from above the car body.
• Wheel wells tend to be much larger than the diameter of the tire, because they do not move with the tire suspension and consequently must be large enough to allow the full range of tire motion on the suspension without touching the interior of the wheel well.
• More elaborate designs include fender skirts for enclosing the outside edge of the wheel well, and stylized pontoon fenders for exposed fenders.

Mountings:

In order to fix the Fender, Mountings are essential. In our design we classified these mountings in 5 areas, namely

• Drip Area Mounting.
• Bumper Mounting.
• Sill Mounting.
• A-Pillar Mounting.
• Splash / Baffle Mounting.

 

These are joined using fasteners and not brackets, thereby improving the NVH Factor (Noise, Vibration, and Harshness).

Designing:

Drip Area Mounting:

• It is the most important mounting unit of a fender. It is connected with the engine compartment and therefore a lot of design constraints are to be followed while designing the drip area,
• It should have sufficient clearance from the front and rear end of the fender to accommodate the Cowl mounting region and the Headlamp housing unit respectively as shown in the figure.

 

• The Master Sketch provides the linear and angular measurements for designing the drip mount after taking into considerations various factors like Hood opening. Tool workability, aesthetics (since Fender is a styling surface). Spring Back effect due to exceeded length etc.

 

Other Mountings:

The mountings for Bumper, Sill, A-Pillar and Splash/Baffle areas were designed according to the engineering standards by providing adequate relief for producibility.

 

Bumper Mounting:

 

 

Sill Mounting:

 

A-Pillar Mounting:

 

Splash / Baffel Mounting:

 

Conclusion:

Thus the Drip Area, Bumper Mount, Cowl Mount, Sill Mount, and A-Pillar Mount were designed for the Fender from the styling surface provided.