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Overheating in commercial vehicles, even though if it’s in LCV segment, is a problem of high significance. There could be various level of problems that may arise due to heat generation resulting from braking (oversized brake drums left the wheels with lesser packaging clearances for air flow and cooling) and some of them are: 1. Early tire wear /reduction in tire life, 2. Air valve heat damage /air leak issues, 3. Frequent puncture problems, 4. Failure of other mating components and other heat initiated failures. However optimum the vent hole shape in a wheel may be, the air flow in the vicinity of drum periphery and wheel rim ID wouldn’t be sufficient enough because of the lesser clearance and packaging space as mentioned earlier. The basic construction of a wheel with disc welded to rim base ID was apparently modified to integrate the disc and gutter and weld it to rim OD.

Wheel is one of the safety critical components which is being subjected to constant weight reduction but not at the expense of its reliability and durability. The Indian automobiles are subjected to overloading and at the same time endure severe shock loads due to poor road conditions. This forces the vehicle manufacturers to increase the factor of safety on the wheel and also test under severe loading conditions apart from the regulatory requirements and international standard norms. This makes the wheel manufacturers to design not only for the rated or standard load provided by the vehicle manufacturers but also considering the road conditions and OEM torture track testing requirements. Hence, along with the conventional fatigue tests according to the customer requirement, realistic loading conditions needs to be brought in to testing and virtual simulation.