Fender Design - Wheel Arch Challenge

Wheel Arc is the part of fender and semicircular part positioned above the wheel. It protects the wheel from unwanted particles and entering of those particles into the engine compartment and even provides safety for pedestrian. Requirements have been proposed by vehicle and road safety community to the minimum requirement of wheel arc distancefrom the wheel for safety.

Uses:

It is a semicircular profile above wheels designed for enclosing tire within the fender. The wheel arch is designed considering all possible motions the tire undergoes while the vehicle is in motion. The wheel arch also ensures stopping any debris that could possibly fly outside the wheel well and hit pedestrians.

• Measure of CL L is done on sections SA, SB , SC, SD, SE.
• At all sections the value of CL L should be greater that 10mm.
• Wheel guard requirement -: The value of 'A' shall be more that 5mm at 300 forward and 500 rearward from the central axis of wheel.

Procedure:

• According to the european standards, the design fender and wheel arc should pass the wheel guard requirement procedures.
• To start the test, first create a plane with origin as center of the wheel plane.
• Then sketch using lines along with given dimensions as SA, SB,SC, SD and SE.

• After sketching the lines, use measurement or simple measurement option to calculate the clearance between sketch lines and wheel arc.
• The clearance between SA line and wheel arc is +10 mm also the line SA lies inside the fender so it is positive value.

• The clearance between SB line and wheel arc is +9.9489 mm also the line SB lies inside the fender so it is positive value.

• The clearance between SC line and wheel arc is -0.113667 mm also the line SC lies outside the fender so it is negative value.

• The clearance between SD line and wheel arc is -3.4207 mm also the line SD lies outside the fender so it is negative value.

• The clearance between SE line and wheel arc is -7.1890 mm also the line SE lies outside the fender so it is negative value.

• To calculate the wheel arc area, use measure function to calculate the wheel arc length by changing the length option and click the wheel arc which is 1041.5129 mm.

• Then Measure the faces of wheel arc to calcualte area which is 24432.9334 mm^2.

Tabulation:

Section	Calculated clearance (in mm)	Minimum clearance to pass (in mm)	Pass/Fail
SA	+10 mm	+10 mm	Pass
SB	+9.9489 mm	+10 mm	Pass
SC	-0.113667 mm	+10 mm	Fail
SD	-3.4207 mm	+10 mm	Fail
SE	-7.1890 mm	+10 mm	Fail

Conclusion:

• Negative sign indicates that the wheel arc is behind the wheel
• All the section don't have the clearance value at least 10mm, only SA and SB is seen to have value 10mm.
• Wheel arc area = 24432.9334 mm^2.

Therefore the wheel arch does not satisfy the requirements as per the European standards. So the styling team needs to work at the section of SC, SD, and SE. For safety purpose the wheel arc should be outside the wheel and the value greater than 10mm and the SD, SE part should come outside the wheel.