Abstract
Recently, the market for aluminum wheels used on passenger cars has become more competitive in that manufacturers adopt new technology to increase the quality and efficiency of the production of aluminum wheels. As computer-aided engineering (CAE) technologies and computer efficiency evolve reliably, finite element analysis (FEM) has become widely employed to address engineering problems. FEM is a powerful tool for comprehending the reaction of the aluminum wheel during the standard test within a short period of time. Therefore, based on the contact and impact theories, FEM is carried out to perform the aluminum wheel impact test. According to the computer-aided design (CAD) file provided by the manufacturer, this research utilizes the CAD software Pro/Engineer® to build a 3D solid model. The preprocessor setting and pretension loading from the model assembly are applied in the CAE software ANSYS®. Then the pretension result solved by ANSYS® is imported to the CAE software LS-DYNA® to continue the analysis of the impact test. Overall, through the comparison between the simulation results and the experiment on aluminum observation, a fast and reliable method to analyze the wheel impact test is established. Furthermore, suggestions on weight reduction for wheels are also made in the thesis.