Automobile Wheel Alignment and Wheel Balancing

With over thirty years of experience in the design, development, and patenting of some products in the field of wheel alignment, the author shares his knowledge on the importance of wheel maintenance to the overall performance of a vehicle. From the ancient bullock carts to chariots to automobiles, wheels have undergone many changes to serve the purpose of mankind's mobility. Mobility is inevitable in today's life. A world without wheels is unimaginable. Every vehicle owner expects his tires to last longer and perform better. But improper wheel alignment and wheel balancing can drastically impact the wear and tear on a tire. This book walks the readers through the basics to techniques for wheel alignment on light vehicles, commercial vehicles, and trailers. In addition, illustrations present various types of tire wear and the cause of each. Finally, the author delves into tire safety from understanding how air pressure effects a tire to the importance of tire rotation.

Semantic Segmentation Network for Surface Defect Detection of Automobile Wheel Hub Fusing High-Resolution Feature and Multi-Scale Feature

Surface defect detection of an automobile wheel hub is important to the automobile industry because these defects directly affect the safety and appearance of automobiles. At present, surface defect detection networks based on convolutional neural network use many pooling layers when extracting features, reducing the spatial resolution of features and preventing the accurate detection of the boundary of defects. On the basis of DeepLab v3+, we propose a semantic segmentation network for the surface defect detection of an automobile wheel hub. To solve the gridding effect of atrous convolution, the high-resolution network (HRNet) is used as the backbone network to extract high-resolution features, and the multi-scale features extracted by the Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP) of DeepLab v3+ are superimposed. On the basis of the optical flow, we decouple the body and edge features of the defects to accurately detect the boundary of defects. Furthermore, in the upsampling process, a decoder can accurately obtain detection results by fusing the body, edge, and multi-scale features. We use supervised training to optimize these features. Experimental results on four defect datasets (i.e., wheels, magnetic tiles, fabrics, and welds) show that the proposed network has better F1 score, average precision, and intersection over union than SegNet, Unet, and DeepLab v3+, proving that the proposed network is effective for different defect detection scenarios.

Design and Analysis of Alloy Wheel

Importance of wheel in the automobile is obvious. The vehicle (car) may be towed without the engine but at the same time even that is not possible with out the wheels, the wheels along the tyre has to carry the vehicle load provide cushioning effect and cope steering control. The main requirement of automobile wheel it must be strong and perform all operations above functions. It should be balanced both statically as well as dynamically. It should be lightest possible so that the unsprung weight is least. The wheel has to pass three types of test before going production, they are cornering fatigue test. Radial fatigue test and Impact test. In this thesis radial fatigue analysis is done to find the number of cycles at which the wheel is going to fail. The wheel is meshed using SOLID 45 element. A load of 2500N was applied on the hub area of the wheel and a pressure of 0.207N/mm2 is applied on the surface of rim.

Force tracking control of grinding end effector based on backstepping + PID

Purpose This study aims to realize the constant force grinding of automobile wheel hub. Design/methodology/approach A force control strategy of backstepping + proportion integration differentiation (PID) is proposed. The grinding end effector is installed on the flange of the robot. The robot controls the position and posture of the grinding end actuator and the grinding end actuator controls the grinding force output. First, the modeling and analysis of the grinding end effector are carried out, and then the backstepping + PID method is adopted to control the grinding end effector to track the expected grinding force. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified by simulation and experiment. Findings The simulation and experimental results show that the backstepping + PID strategy can track the expected force quickly, and improve the dynamic response performance of the system and the quality of grinding and polishing of automobile wheel hub. Research limitations/implications The mathematical model is based on the pneumatic system and ideal gas, and ignores the influence of friction in the working process of the cylinder, so the mathematical model proposed in this study has certain limitations. A new control strategy is proposed, which is not only used to control the grinding force of automobile wheels, but also promotes the development of industrial control. Social implications The automatic constant force grinding of automobile wheel hub is realized, and the manpower is liberated. Originality/value First, the modeling and analysis of the grinding end effector are carried out, and then the backstepping + PID method is adopted to control the grinding end effector to track the expected grinding force. The nonlinear model of the system is controlled by backstepping method, and in the process, the linear system composed of errors is obtained, and then the linear system is controlled by PID to realize the combination of backstepping and PID control.

Investigation on clinching assembly process of automobile wheel hub bearings

In this study, a precise and high-efficient clinching assembly strategy was proposed to improve the automobile wheel hub bearing’s reliability of service quality consistency. The structure of the wheel hub bearing was first improved to enable the requirement of axial working clearance. During assembly, the accuracy of each bearing was monitored online via micro-laser sensor to achieve precise and consistent axial working clearance. The effect of processing parameters were analyzed via simulation analysis. According to simulation results, it only cost 2.35 s to complete assembly process and the optimal clamping force of 38.8 kN was generated. The prototype bearings were manufactured and exhibited a reliable service life of more than 250,000 km, which verified the reasonability of the proposed clinching assembly strategy. Additionally, the assembly mechanism was further analyzed. The ferrite in the clinched hub shaft end was gradually lengthened and the cementite aggregation was improved.

THEORETICAL RESEARCHES OF A CAR WHEEL WITH A TRACTION COMPENSATOR

he rolling process of the wheel drive is accompanied by the loading of the wheel drive by the force of gravity, which leads to compression and stretching of the tire during its deformation. The article deals with the study of the mechanical system “automobile wheel-spring compensator of traction force”, using the theorem on the change of kinetic energy of this system, the general equation of dynamics, as well as the Lagrange equation of the second kind. The purpose of the study is to improve the design and technological scheme of rolling the wheel drive, converting the energy of the wheel drive into the rotational motion of the wheel-elastic traction compensator, which is an auxiliary factor to this technology. The scientific and practical significance of the work lies in the fact that for the first time a technology was proposed in which the share of rotational motion energy of a mechanical system “automobile wheel-spring traction compensator” was introduced during rotation of a wheel drive, which significantly increases traction. The research methodology was to establish a mathematical relationship between the force created by the “car wheel-spring traction compensator” and the additional path that the wheel travels. The result is the developed geometry of the wheel drive in the damping cycle “automotive wheel-spring traction compensator” failure of the bearing surface. The value of the study, the results of this work will contribute to the automotive industry. A model for increasing the traction capabilities of the vehicle is proposed.