Fender Design Challenge

FENDER DESIGN

FENDER

Fender is the American English term for the part of an automobile, motorcycle, or other vehicle body that frames a wheel well. Actually, it is a part that is in contact with the different parts of the vehicle like A-pillar, sill, etc. typically fenders are rigid house the wheels inner body parts both at the front and back sides of the vehicle.

The fender plays a major role in pedestrian safety while a car is in motion. When it is in motion the wheel carryover the small stones mud particle and throw them away which may harm pedestrians, so while designing these considerations are to be taken into account.

Types of Fenders

• Presently we are using the half bumper type, the reason for choosing the half bumper type is that when we choose the full bumper type the blank used for creating it is very large and has a lot of wastage, but in the case of half bumper we have the possibility to reduce the scrap, which is also called as scrap management.
• In the half bumper type, we reduce the usage of the steel material and uses lots of plastic on the bumper which in term decreases the weight of the car and increases the performance.

Fender Wheel Arch

• The fender wheel arch is having some standard specifications, for example, if you see the car from the front, if you see the wheel outside the fender, it does more chipping and it causes lots of damage to the pedestrians and also to the car.
• In order to maintain the pedestrian’s safety, we have to position the tire wheel inside the fender
• For the European requirement, the clearance between the wheel and the fender outermost skin is 5mm.
• This requirement changes from country to country based upon the road conditions.

Assembly

There are two types of assembly, they are

• Bottom-up assembly
• Top-down assembly

Bottom-up assembly: The bottom-up assembly is the most preferred approach for creating assembly models. In this type of assembly, the components are created in a part design workbench (As NX cad part) file. Parts are conceived in assembly design workbench using product structure tools. After inserting each component, constraints are applied to position them properly in the 3d space with respect to the other components. This assembly is preferred for large assemblies, especially those having intricate individual components

Top-down assembly: In the top assembly design approach, components are created inside the assembly design workbench. Therefore, there is no need to create separate part files of the components. This design approach is completely different from the bottom-up design approach. Here you have to create the product file first and then one by one create all the components. Note that even then the parts are created the product file, they are saved and opened individually one by one when they are needed. Here the construction and the assembly take place simultaneously.

Mounting Regions on Fender

There are 5 mounting regions on the fender, they are

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

Manufacturing Process

1. As per the design plan for tools to make ready the product for assembly.

1. Snipping or blanking operation should be done for taking the piece of the sheet from the long rolled one.
2. Bending and restriking are performed to get the desired shape.

1. Trimming is performed to trim the unwanted sections from the working sheet.
2. Piercing should be performed to make the required holes on the sheet.
3. Embosses are created by doing the deep drawing by considering the good draft angle.

1. Burring is the process of clearing the burrs and edges like sharp corners after operations.

DESIGN METHODOLOGY

Design of Drip mounting

• It is the important mounting unit of the fender. it is connected with the engine compartment; therefore, a lot of design constraints are to be followed while designing the fender.
• While designing the drip area we have to initially leave 200-300 mm for the cowl top.
• For placing the head-lamp we have to leave at least 150 mm at the front while designing the fender.
• The cowl top part consists of a wiper motor and its instruments.
• Two darts are added on the longer side of the drip area in order to provide stiffness and add strength to the part. This helps the fender to not to vibrate and impact the forces outside of the fender during the motion of the vehicle.
• Embossing is provided on the mounting to strengthen them during fastening.

Design of Sill mounting

Sill is the panel directly below the bottom of the door supporting the floor and may be used to combine the floor and the body. The bottom end of the fender is mounted on the sill body for reinforcement of the fender panel, thus the sill mounting position is designed with holes and emboss. M5 fasteners are used to fix the fenders on the sill body.

Design of Bumper Mounting

A bumper mounting area is used to fix the plastic bumper to the fender with the help of the fasteners.

Design of A-pillar mounting

The A-pillar is the structural pillar that combines the body to the roof, this makes the sides of the windshield rest, front fenders are fastened to the A-pillar to form a robust structure.

Design of Baffle mounting

Baffle mounting or mudguard are clip fit type of mounting on the inner side of the fender arch over the tire, it protects the car engine compartment and pedestrians from causing injuries from chip out debris on the road when the car is in motion, they are mounted on the fender using a special type of locking clips which are made up of plastics.

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