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The main goal of lightweight concepts are the improvement of cost efficiency and production processability. To guarantee still a sufficient operating safety of these new designed components an increasing effort during the development process is required. Numerical structural durability analysis methods give us the possibility to identify the changed fatigue sensitivity and behaviour of these new designs to the different service loads and assembly conditions. And most important, necessary modifications for existing numerical and experimental design concepts can be derived. In the following on a example of new lightweight heavy truck wheel hub the results of a joint project using a special numerical concept are presented.

The validation of the wheel/hub assembly has been carried out in the Biaxial Wheel/Hub Test facility since the early ‘1980’s developed at Fraunhofer LBF. This test procedure became a standard at most of the European wheel and truck producers and was also introduced as SAE wheel standard J 2562, issued in 2003. For newly developed Super Single low profile tires 495/45R22.5, which will replace double rear tires on heavy trucks and buses, the corresponding steel and aluminum wheels had to be designed by the suppliers. Because of the lack of information about load data and load programs for testing, extensive research had to be undertaken. The load data had been measured in collaboration with DaimlerChrysler on a M.B. Actros on proving grounds and on the “Black Forest round track” in Germany. Based on the derived data a special “Eurocycle” load program has been developed for accelerated testing of the wheels in the Biaxial Wheel Test Rig.