Fender Design Challenge

Aim - To design the front fender of a car with the help of given data.

Introduction - fender is a part of the automobile which engulfs the wheel in the form of a frame. The main purpose of fender is to prevent sand, mud and other small but hardened particles like stone debris from entering the engine compartment after being thrown into air in all directions due to circular motion of the tyre. It takes into account the factor that the debris not only enters the engine compartment, but also is thrown outwards towards other cars and pedestrians. Keeping these two factors in mind a fender of a car iss designed.

How a fender looks like?

The highlited portion in the image given below is the fender of a car.

There are mainly two types of fender front the front portion of a car today -

Half bumper type and Full bumper type

Full bumper type - This type was a thing of older days and resulted usage of more material along with more scrap material. The wight of the bumper also affected the car's perormance.

Half bumper type - To make manufacturing easier and reduce the overall cost, half bumpers were introduced. These resulted in dereased weight of car, thus affecting its performance.

These bumpers are generally used in wide cars where from above the car these arent visible as a separate car feature. For narrow cars, fenders were more like a cover housing the wheel beneath it. These were visible as a separate feature of a car.

Fig - fender of narrow car

Given data -

Mounting points - Mounting points are the positions where the fender is fixed to the frame of a car.

Drip mounting - This mounting attaches the fender to the engine compartment. For designing the drip area mounting various factors are taken into consideration like - Spring back effect, head lamp space, space for windshield wipers on the cowl. Spring back effect is countered by installing darts on the drip of fender. Distance of drip from cowl is taken equal to 150 mm and distance from head lamp is taken equal to 150 mm. The flange of drip portion is 7 degree, then 40 degree down and 5 degree down which should be total length of 40 mm or less from top of fender.

Fig - Drip mounting on a fender

A-Pillar mounting - this mounting is fixed to the A- Pillar of the frame of a car. It is near the wind shield of a car.

Fig - A- Pillar mounting

Bumper Mounting - This mounting is fiexed at the position near the head lamps of a car. bumper is the front portion of a car which takes the first hit in case of a head on collision.

Fig - bumper mountng

Sill mounting - This mounting is used to fix the fender at the sill area region of the frame of a car.

Fig - Sill mounting

Baffle mountings - These montings fix the fender at the positions which form the wheel arc.

Fig - Baffle mountings

Conclusion - The design of front fender is done keeping in mind all the necessary factors and given criteria.