アプリケーションギャラリ

Nowadays, there is a trend to manufacture wheel rim made up of a composite material instead of aluminum. The primary reason is to have lower values of unsprung mass which leads to faster response time and thus better acceleration, braking and cornering performances. Typically a carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composite is used to manufacture a composite wheel rim.

To understand and improve the design of a composite wheel rim, an example model is built in COMSOL. The example demonstrates the modeling of a wheel rim made up of laminated composite with carbon-epoxy material. The composite laminate has different number of plies in different regions of the wheel rim. First, a stress analysis of the wheel rim is performed in which rim is subjected to the inflation pressure and the tire load. In order to compute modal response of the wheel rim, a prestressed eigenfrequency analysis is performed in which rim is subjected to the rotating frame forces.