Fender Design Challenge

OBJECTIVE :

To design the car Front Fender according to the given design parameters related to industry standards. 

FENDER :

Fender is a part of the vehicle hat frames the wheel. Its primary purpose is to prevent sand, mud, rock etc from being thrown away in to the air by rotating tire. The part the car covering the wheel has two very different names depending on whether you are coming from an American view point or British one.

Although nowadays the fender covering the wheel is very much part of the overall car body, in the early days of car design the wheels were more remote from the chassis, and so to stop all matter of grubby bits flicking up at high speed from the wheels in to other road users there needed to be some kind of extra guard. 

To the British designers of the day these extra panels sticking out from the main body- with sweeping, flowing curves, resembled the wings of birds, and so the name was given. Over the years the name has stuck to some extent, but with the wheels of modern cars becoming ever more integrated in to the overall form of the car the idea of a wing seems a bit vague, and so these are often now simply called 'arches' or 'panels' ( or bumpers if they are at the points likely to my contact with other vehicles, like the front and back). Indeed the term wing to a british youngster would usually conjure up images of a spoiler attached to the back of a car.

In the US these wheel-covers were given a name which reflected their purpose rather than the way they looked, and so the piece of the metal which guards the detritus flying up from the road was called the 'fender'- literally fending off the attack of the muddy roads. As time went on this function still applied, and therfore so did the name. In the states, a small incident that might be called a 'bump' by a brit where the bumper makes contact with something, would often be called a ' fender bender'.

TYPES OF FENDER :

There are mainly two types of fender :

1. Half bumper type

This half bumper type is used for mainly cost and material cutting purpose as this type is also provides ease of manufacturing and the strength is also improved for half bumper type fender.

2. Full bumper type

The full bumper type model is used in the olden days this creates much wastage of material and the unnecessary cost is increased. 

INPUT DESIGN PARAMETERS:

Input skin data

    

MOUNTINGS:

There are 5 mounting regions on the fender.They are :

• Drip mounting
• Body mounting
• Bumper mounting
• Sill mounting
• A-pilllar mounting

DESIGN OF DRIP: 

• This mounting is attached to th engine compartment of the car with help of  welded nuts.
• The curve selection command is used for creating curves on the surface of flange to trim the extra sheet metal.
• The position is considered as 200 mm from cowl and 150 mm from headlight position.
• The flange should be about 7 degree, then 40 degree down and 5 degree down which should be total length of 40mm or less from top of fender.
• Then the flat length of 25 mm is given.
• The last projection is followed as per dimensions using Pythagoras theorem.
• Then the flange holes were created for mounting points.
• Ribs are created to strengthen the drip area at the joints.

BUMPER MOUNTING:

• The bumper mounting is placed at the mating of headlight position. 
• This also has a flange with holes for mountings.

SILL MOUNTING :

• The sill mounting is done by extension of sill area flange. 
• After extension of flange holes were made for mountings.
• Embosses were created for the hole mounting points that provides more strength.

A-PILLAR MOUNTING :

• The consideration is taken from the place at cowl is placed. 
• It is taken at the back of the drip mount.

WHEEL ARCH MOUNTINGS  :

• The wheel design is always depends on regulations based on different countries like European, Japan, US etc.
• The flange provided for he wheel arch is provided with just holes for push pin clips to mount wheel arch.

CONCLUSION :

Finally, Front Fender is designed by using the given skin data and considering the given design parameters of all mountings.And I learnt the importance of each mounting provided on fender.