Fender Design - Wheel Arch Challenge
Fender is the term for the part of an automobile, motorcycle, or other vehicle body that frames a wheel well. Its purpose is to keep mud, rocks, and other road debris from being thrown around by the tires. In other words, the fender is a housing for the wheels that keeps road debris contained. If there was nothing covering the wheels, all kinds of debris would be kicked up by the rotating tires. The fender not only protects your car from sustaining damage from road debris but it prevents this debris from being thrown up at other vehicles on the road.
The figure below illustrates the Wheel Arch gap (L) which is required to be more than 10 mm as per the European standards for fender design.
The given fender design fails the Wheel Arch gap study as, three of the five points from which a distance of 10 mm must be maintained are in the negative direction, i.e. the wheel protrudes outside the fender.
The figure below illustrates this and the values of the wheel arch gap at the specified points.
| L - As from figure | Distance in mm |
| SB-SB | 10 |
| SA-SA | 9.949 |
| SC-SC | - 0.1139 |
| SD-SD | - 2.8875 |
| SE-SE | - 5.9973 |