FATIGUE LIFE ESTIMATION OF AN ALUMINIUM WHEEL RIM USING FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

In this era, there is a call for sustainable designs with higher life expectancy and so automotive industry demands flawless wheel rims. The paper deals with the design of aluminium wheel rim for automobile application. The Fatigue life estimation by finite element analysis, under radial fatigue load condition, is carried out to analyse the stress distribution and resulted displacement in the alloy wheel. S–N curve approach is taken for envisaging the fatigue life of aluminium wheels by simulating transient structural analysis with cyclic loads as they are found to converge with experimental results, safety factor for fatigue life is also assessed. Paper also deliberates about experimental designs and response surface of discussed experiment using ANSYS to achieve validate results in optimum range.