Aim:

To calculate the Wheel Arch gap at required points and check whether the car passes the European standard.

Introduction:

Fender is the part in any vehicle which is used as a side covering for the wheels. There is an arch shaped cavity in the fender which is there to make place for wheels, also known as wheel arch. The fender is responsible for the safety of pedestrians or other vehicles during collision incidents. It also functions as to prevent mud, stones etc. to spread to car body or to fly away on others during the movement of vehicle.

For designing the fender, certain regulations are made which must be followed. Different regulations are mentioned below:

• Japanese Regulations
• European Regulations
• US Regulations

Japanese Regulations

According to Japanese regulations, the clearance between tyre and fender is measured at three different locations:

• 30^o forward from the vertical axis of the wheel.
• At the vertical axis of the wheel.
• 50^o rearward from the vertical axis.

At all these locations, the minimum clearance allowed is 5mm. If the clearance is less then the design is failed according to the Japanese regulations.

European Regulations

According to the European regulations, the horizontal distance and vertical distance between the tyre and the fender is measured at five different locations. The locations are shown in the figure below:

At all these five locations the horizontal clearance (l) should be greater than or equal to 10mm and the vertical distance between wheel and the fender should be more than 5mm.

US regulations

According to US regulations the clearance must be greater than 5mm in an area from 0^o to 100^o on both the sides of vertical axis. A gap of 10^o – 10^o is maintained resulting in total of 21 locations to measure.

Calculating the wheel arch according to European standard

Initially a fender- wheel model was provided to measure the clearance which is shown in the figure below:

The five locations were identified and the clearances ‘a’ and ‘l’ were measured.

Simple distance command was used to measure the distance between the objects.

Clearance at location ‘A’

a = 49.6439mm

l = 10mm

Clearance at Location ‘B’

a = 32.5497mm

l = 9.949mm

Clearance at Location ‘C’

a = 43.3741mm

l = 0.112637mm

Clearance at Location ‘D’

a = 47.7498mm

l = 2.8875mm

Clearance at Location ‘E’

a = 52.9657mm

l = 5.9973mm

Results

Section	Horizontal Dist (l) min:10mm	Vertical Dist (a) Min: 5 mm	Result
A	10	49.6439	PASS
B	9.949	32.5497	FAIL
C	0.112637	43.3741	FAIL
D	2.8875	47.7498	FAIL
E	5.9973	52.9657	FAIL

Conclusion

The Fender wheel arch design is a failure according to European regulations.