Fender Design - Wheel Arch Challenge

Fender Wheel Arch Design

What is fender wheel arch?

Wheel arch is the circular part on the fender that covers wheels. This part is created for pedestrian safety and passenger safety in the car. Basically, this is a cover over the tyer which will stop the stone chipping, dirt, water splash, etc., over other cars or pedestrian on the road and also on the body of the cars, which can cause damage to the inner body. the figure shows the different parts of the fender wheel arch, the red line is the wheel arch.

How to design fender wheel arch?

The wheel arch design will vary from region to region depend on the roads, surroundings, types of traffic laws etc., the basic is the distance between fender and the wheel.

The distance ‘L’ marked in the figure shows the clearance between the fender and the wheel and this distance is different for different region. First we will draw the line as per European standard and then project those line to the top view and then check the distance ‘L’ for all A,B,C,D and E points, if all point measure 10mm or more then design is okay but if any point measure less then 10mm then design fails. We will check for European standard.

The image shows the European standard, here we can see that for European standard we need to make a horizontal and vertical line from wheel base and then draw the SB, SA and SC. SB at 30° to the left of SA and SC at 50° to the right of SA. In addition to that we need to draw a line SE at 150mm point form zero at right of SA and then take midpoint of SC and SE and draw another line SD. For European standard we have to check for all SA, SB, SC, SD and SE values and all values should be minimum 10mm.

Let’s check value for our model.

Step 1: Draw the lines as per the requirement.

Step 2: Check the distance from the top for clearance

Result: As we can see from the image that point A,B and C match the minimum requirement of 10mm clearance as per European standard, but D and E are less then 10mm, so this design fail to pass the wheel arch regulation of European standard.