Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443

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On optimization of a car rim using nite element method
H. Akbulut
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Atat urk University, 25240 Erzurum, Turkey
Abstract
This paper presents the optimization of an octopus-type car rim for which critical zones were found rst
and then optimum thickness was investigated using an elasto-plastic analysis. In this study, three-dimensional
nite element method was used for conducting elasto-plastic analysis. In the nite elements analysis, the
elements forming the meshes are hexahedral linear elements with eight nodes. Twelve dierent meshes were
used. A quadrant of the rim was utilized due to its symmetric shape. The theoretical results were compared
with experimental ones. It seems that the theoretical results are in agreement with the experimental ones. The
results are presented in tabular and graphical forms. ? 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Rim; Finite element method; Elasto-plastic analysis; Optimization
1. Introduction
As part of technological improvement, comfort and safety have become essential demands of
human beings. This comes not only from market-oriented competition but also from legislation that
may seek some certain standards. Cars, important favours of technological development, are widely
used in daily life. It seems that mankind no longer lives without them. Therefore, these wonderful
machines should be safe and economical so that people could use them safely and more people could
purchase them. Since rims, on which cars move, are the most vital elements in a vehicle, they must
be designed carefully. The rim type examined in this study has some trouble when touching any
curb or entering a sharp curve. The rims manufactured by various methods are made of either steel
or cast aluminium alloys. In particular, rims made of aluminium casting alloys are more preferred
because of the weight and the cost eectiveness.
Each part of a vehicle is certainly important for various reasons, such as safety and cost eective-
ness. Therefore, many works on dierent parts of vehicles have been carried out until now. However,
to the best of the authors knowledge, there is no paper in the open literature on the optimization
of the rim and the present paper attempts to ll this gap. For example, Rusin and his group [1]
E-mail address: akbuluth@atauni.edu.tr (H. Akbulut).
0168-874X/03/$ - see front matter ? 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0168- 874X(02)00091- 4
434 H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443
studied railroad car wheel by using rectangular elements, while Bagc[2] investigated rotating wheel.
Levis examined diesel engine piston by using three-dimensional nite element method (FEM) [3].
Weisheng et al. investigated S-shape web plate wheel by FEM [4]. In that study, the structure char-
acteristics of S-shape web plate wheel are described. Seireg [5], Berger [6], Bhavikatti [7] and Ray
[8] worked on optimum designs of dierent rotating discs. Ogut [9] studied another kind of car rim.
But in that study, only stress analysis was carried out. In another study [10], a design optimization
process for elasto-plastic material behaviour of laminate composite structures, made of thermoplastic
resins, was described, considering two optimization levels: (1) the geometric linear behaviour under
elasto-plastic loading conditions and (2) the change of the ply thickness of the plates or shallow
shells and the height and width of the reinforcement beams to structure weight minimization, under
the constraints of maximum allowed displacement or maximum strainstress level related with the
amount of plastic zone, without structural plastic collapse or geometric instability in plastic loading
conditions.
Also, there are some studies of elasto-plastic analysis, which contribute to this study. Two- and
three-dimensional nite elements were used for three elasto-plastic analyses of composite materials
and structures. These studies were carried out for thick and thin plates and shells [1113]. Guo
et al. [14] developed a simplied ecient FEM called the inverse approach (IA) to estimate the
large elasto-plastic strains in thin metallic panels obtained by deep drawing. In that paper an iterative
scheme was used to nd the original position of each material point in the initial at blank after
which it is possible to estimate the strains and stresses in the nal workpiece. Also, Toparli et al.
[15] studied the eect of the residual stresses on the fatigue crack growth behaviour at fastener holes
using FEM with the initial stress method.
The primary objective of this study is to carry out the optimization of a car rim by using
elasto-plastic analysis with initial stress method. In the solution of the problem, FEM, whose meshes
include hexahedral linear elements with eight nodes, was used. The load applied to the rim was
assumed to be steady, that is, time independent. In the future, a study with impact load will be
carried out using the same model. For analysis, a quarter of the rim was utilized. The elements in
the critical zones were taken to be smaller than others in order to obtain stresses more accurately.
2. Elasto-plastic stress analysis
Various computational procedures are used with success for a limit range of elasto-plastic problems
utilizing FEM. Here, after the stiness matrix of the structure was obtained applying boundary
conditions, the system equation based on the minimum potential energy principle was solved by
using Gauss elimination method, which results in the element nodal displacements. By means of
these displacements, the stresses in the nodal points were calculated. At each nodal point, there are
six stress components.
Elasto-plastic stress analysis was carried out by using initial stress method, an eective method
developed by Zienkiewicz [12]. This method (also known as modied NewtonRaphson method)
is illustrated in Fig. 1. In this gure, the empirical equation proposed by Ludwik is used in the
elasto-plastic region [16]:
o
[
= o
0
+ Kc
n
p
, (1)
H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443 435
Fig. 1. Modied NewtonRaphson method (initial stress method).
where o
[
is the elasto-plastic stress and c
p
(or c) is the plastic strain corresponding to the o
[
, and
o
0
(=o
y
) is the yield stress, K and n are the hardening parameter and the strain-hardening exponent,
respectively. By using of the elasto-plastic stress analysis, it is determined whether the nodal points
are included in the plastic zone, comparing the equivalent stresses with the material yielding stress
obtained from experiments. If the nodal points are included in the plastic zone, o
01
from Fig. 1 can
be obtained as below:
o
01
= o
1
o
[1
. (2)
Then, by adding o
01
to o
1
, the increasing stress value o
2
can be obtained as
o
2
= o
1
+ o
01
. (3)
In a general form, it can be rewritten as
o
n
= o
1
+ o
0
n1
, (4)
where the stress o
n
corresponds to c
n
in the elasto-plastic region. As an illustration, at the strain
point c
2
, the stress dierence between o
2
and real stress results in o
02
. The stress o
3
can be obtained
by replacing o
02
with o
01
in Eq. (3). The following analogue iteration steps lead to the point
corresponding to the elasto-plastic strain c
n
and stress o
1
, where o
0i
is the initial stress.
For an iteration step, the loading stress components occurring during the deformation are as
{o} = {o
x
o
,
o
:
t
x,
t
,:
o
x:
}
T
. (5)
By using {o}, the initial stress can be calculated as below:
{o
0
} = {o}
o
0
o
, (6)
436 H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443
where o is the equivalent initial stress which is calculated according to the von-Mises yield criterion
as follows [16]:
o =
1

(o
x
o
,
)
2
+ (o
,
o
:
)
2
+ (o
:
o
x
)
2
+ 6(t
2
x,
+ t
2
,:
+ t
2
x:
) (7)
and o
0
is the equivalent initial stress, and it is calculated by using the following formula:
o
0
= o o
[
, (8)
where o
[
is obtained from oc diagram relating to uniaxially loaded tensile specimen. For the
three-dimensional analysis, the initial stress can be given in vector form as follows:
{o
0
} = {o
0x
o
0,
o
0:
t
0x,
t
0,:
o
0x:
}
T
, (9)
where o
0x
, o
0,
, o
0:
, t
0x,
, t
0,:
, o
0x:
are the components of the initial stress in the three-dimensional case.
The force corresponding to the initial stress is as given below [11]:
{F}
o
0
=

[B]
T
{o
0
} dJ, (10)
where [B] is the straindisplacement transformation matrix, and J is the volume. For the elasto-plastic
analysis, rst, the solution displacement vector {o
1
} is calculated from {F}
o
01
as follows:
{o}
1
= [K]
1
({F}
o
01
{F}), (11)
where [K] and {F} are the stiness matrix and the loading vector, respectively.
After the following iteration steps (o
i
, i =1, 2, . . . , n) are computed until there is no or negligible
dierence between {o}
i
and {o}
i+1
, the displacement vector is calculated as
{o}
n
= [K]
1
({F} {F}
o
0n
). (12)
Finally, the elasto-plastic stress {o
[
}
n
corresponding to {o}
n
is calculated as
{o
[
}
n
= [C][B]{o}
n
{o
0
}
n
, (13)
where [C] is the material property matrix.
In the calculation of the residual stresses {o}
res
[15], the following equation is used:
{o}
res
= {o
[
}
n
{o}
el
, (14)
where {o}
n
are the elasto-plastic stresses given above, and {o}
el
are the elastic stresses corresponding
to {c}
1
resulting from the external load P which is applied to the rim [17]. The components of
residual stress can be given in vector form as
{o
res
} = {o
r
x
o
r
,
o
r
:
t
r
x,
t
r
,:
o
r
x:
}
T
. (15)
H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443 437
Fig. 2. Three-dimensional view of the rim.
3. Denition of the problem
In this paper, an octopus-type car rim, shown in Fig. 2, was studied. Its dimensions are given in
Figs. 6 and 7. Three-dimensional FEM was exploited to determine the stress distribution within the
rim body. The elements used in the mesh are hexahedral linear elements with eight nodes consisting
of three degrees of freedom.
A quarter of the rim consisting of 269 elements and 529 nodes is sucient. The analysis of the
whole or half-rim is unnecessary. It is assumed that the displacements in the ,: plane approach
zero because the nodes in this plane are too far from the nodes on which forces were applied. The
approach described above was veried with the experiments.
In Figs. 47, the three-dimensional nite element models of the structure are presented in various
viewpoints. Twelve dierent meshes, whose element and node numbers were the same but thicknesses
were dierent, were investigated. However, in this paper, four of them were taken into consideration
because the results found from these four meshes comprised the others. To obtain the optimum rim
shape, its strong parts was gradually diminished. The decrease in the amounts of thicknesses of the
rim are given in Table 3. Its strong parts determined according to the stress analysis case in the
original mesh are indicated by the lines in Figs. 6 and 7.
Fig. 4 also illustrates both boundary conditions and loading case of the rim. Here, u, t and w are
the displacements in the directions x, , and :, respectively. The boundary conditions were applied
to both the plane x: (t = 0) and the plane ,: (u = w = 0). The body was loaded conveniently
with the testing loading. The load P having the angle 13

with :-axis consists of two components

acting in x and : directions, which is a critical position for the rim (Figs. 38).
The mechanical properties of the rim material G-Al Si7 Mg in the norm of DIN (see the norms
of A356), an aluminium casting alloy and (Si: 7.0; Mg: 0.5), were determined in a universal In-
stron machine by testing the specimens cut out from the rim. These properties are presented in
Table 1.
438 H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443
Fig. 3. Testing conguration of the rim.
Fig. 4. Mesh generation, boundary conditions and loading.
Table 1
Properties of the rim material
Material properties
Elasticity modulus, E 70 GPa
Poissons ratio, v 0.30
Yield stress, o
y
70 MPa
Hardening parameter, K 513 MPa
Strain hardening exponent, n 0.545
Density, j 2700 kg}m
3
The testing conguration of the rim recommended by the producer rm is presented in Fig. 3,
which is the most extreme position during the car movement. Strain measurements were made using
strain gauges stuck on a few points outside the yielded zone along the line 111-201 on the surface of
the rim body (Fig. 5). In order to determine the experimental stresses, one-dimensional stressstrain
H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443 439
Fig. 5. The front view of the nite element model on the x, plane.
Fig. 6. The back view of the nite element model on the x, plane and the yielding points.
440 H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443
Fig. 7. The view of the nite element model on the x: plane and the yielding points.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
4 6 8 10 12 13 16 18
x (cm)
E
q
u
i
v
a
l
e
n
t

s
t
r
e
s
s

(
M
P
a
)
mesh-d
mesh-c
mesh-b
mesh-a
Fig. 8. For four meshes, comparison between material yielding stress and the equivalent stresses occurring at the some
nodal points versus the radius along the x-axis.
relationship was used as:
o = cE, (16)
where o and c are the calculated experimental stress and the measured strain along the line 111-201,
respectively, and E is the elasticity modulus of the rim material. To be able to compare the exper-
imental stresses with theoretical ones, the theoretical stresses calculated at the points on which the
H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443 441
Table 2
Volumes and weights of meshes ad and original rim mesh
Meshes Volumes Weights
(cm
3
) (N)
Original 632.570 66.70
Mesh-a 574.109 60.86
Mesh-b 564.818 59.84
Mesh-c 547.222 57.98
Mesh-d 545.762 56.90
Table 3
Decrease in the amounts of rim thicknesses along the lines in Figs. 6 and 7
Meshes Lines (mm)
II IIII IIIIII IVIV VV VIVI VIIVII
a 2.5 5 5 3 2
b 5 6 5 3 3
c 7.5 8 7 3 2.5 2 2
d 8.5 9 8 4 3 2.5 2.5
Table 4
Residual stress components at the nodal points 192 and 193 for P = 16 kN
Yielded points P = 16 kN
o
r
x
(MPa) o
r
,
(MPa) o
r
:
(MPa) t
r
x,
(MPa) t
r
,:
(MPa) t
r
x:
(MPa)
192 80.1 26.1 20.7 12.0 0.6 2.8
193 67.6 23.7 18.7 17.1 1.8 8.7
strain gauges were stuck were reduced to the line 111-201. The comparison of the stresses computed
theoretically and measured experimentally are given in Table 6.
4. Results and conclusions
In this study, it was found that nodes 192 and 193 yielded rst when the loading applied to the
rim was increased up to P = 16 kN. Therefore, it can be certainly said that the neighbourhood of
those nodes is a critical zone. This zone exists at the joints which connect the rim centre to the
outer circle, as shown in Figs. 6 and 7. When the force was increased up to P = 17 kN, plastic
deformation expanded to nodes 162 and 163, as shown in the same gures (Tables 25).
In order to optimize the rim body, its thick parts were suciently weakened with regard to the
lines II, IIII, IIIIII, IVIV, VV, VIVI and VIIVII, shown in Figs. 6 and 7. Fig. 8 shows
the equivalent stresses calculated according to Eq. (7) along the line 21-69-193-421-313 for the
442 H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443
Table 5
Residual stress components at the nodal points 162, 163, 192 and 193 for P = 17 kN
Yielded points P = 17 kN
o
r
x
(MPa) o
r
,
(MPa) o
r
:
(MPa) t
r
x,
(MPa) t
r
,:
(MPa) t
r
x:
(MPa)
162 60.0 20.6 17.0 19.2 3.3 3.8
163 62.3 22.2 21.5 11.0 1.5 14.0
192 88.1 28.8 22.9 13.3 0.6 2.8
193 74.3 26.2 20.7 18.8 1.9 9.4
Table 6
Comparison of the stresses computed theoretically and measured experimentally
along the line 111-201 for P = 16 kN
Stresses (MPa) 100 mm 120 mm 140 mm
Theoretical 23.70 26.67 34.07
Experimental 24.21 27.32 34.35
four meshes. During the calculation, attention was paid to see that the equivalent stresses within
the rim body did not exceed the yielding stress. Therefore, of the four meshes, only mesh-d is
unsuitable because the equivalent stress in the critical zone is higher than the yielding stress and
plastic deformation occurs in this zone. But it is clearly seen that mesh-c is the most convenient
one. In Table 2, it is seen that the weight of the rim was decreased from 66.7 to 57.98 N, which
means a saving of 14.69%.
While Tables 4 and 5 present the residual stress components occurring at nodes 192, 193, 162
and 163 for P = 16 and 17 kN, Figs. 6 and 7 illustrate the expansion of the plastic region near
those nodes. Since these residual stresses in the tables have opposite signs, they caused a consid-
erable increase in the strength of the rim. Or instead, for a good design, this region should be
strengthened.
Table 6 presents a comparison between theoretical and experimental results at certain points along
the line 111-201 (x = 100, 120and 140 mm). It is seen that theoretical results are very well in
agreement with experimental ones. This case proves that the quarter rim is enough for examination.
In conclusion, this study shows that stress distribution on rims varies from one region to another.
Based on this type of FEM analysis, one can decide as to which parts are critical, then, can strengthen
those zones. On the other hand, stress distribution may not be that high on some other parts,
hence, excess can be removed from these regions to prevent material extravagance. Furthermore, if
the residual stresses remain in the critical zones of the rim, it should be taken into consideration
that these parts will be more enduring, hence safer. Therefore, this study contributes much to rim
design concept with the above-mentioned points, which are not possible with conventional rim design
techniques.
H. Akbulut / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 39 (2003) 433443 443
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