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The objective of this project is to reduce the weight of a wheel without affecting its primary functions such as fitment, air flow and fatigue life, the design is made with the concept of variable thickness, meaning reducing thickness wherever the stresses are low and also addressing the failures in the field. However, requirement of a prototype makes the validation process laborious, costly and time consuming. Finite Element Method (FEM) has evolved as a resourceful tool for analyzing various components under a variety of operating conditions. It is being used not only to predict the critical points bearing the highest stress in a wheel, but also to predict its fatigue life. The present study focuses on the design of variable thickness disc and validation of the same using FEM for air flow analysis and Rig testing. The analysis was carried out on existing and proposed designs and the salient features were compared.

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.