Wheel Test System
The wheels of vehicles are subject to complex demands. Particularly the spoke or dish area is essentially
stressed by rotating bending loads. Additionally all components in the subsequent area of
the wheel, e.g. wheel flanges and flange bearings including their screw connections become
stressed by rotating bending moment loads. These stresses can be simulated in the laboratory with
a rotating bending test rigs with an unbalanced-mass. Advantages of these systems are an extremely
low energy consumption, high testing frequencies, small maintenance costs and an exact
automatic incipient crack recognition.
The wheel test rig for passenger and small truck wheels is designed as an unbalanced mass resonance
test rig for applying rotating bending loads up to 10 kNm. The wheel is clamped on a baseplate
with T-slots. Because of the stiff assembly it is possible to test wheels up to a size of 25”.
The rotating bending load is introduced to the specimen by a lever-arm which is connected to the
unbalanced mass drive. For the adaptation of different rim sizes the lever-arm can be height adjusted
by a manual spindle drive with shaft joints.
To meet the high requirements of the data acquisition and the controlling the lever-arm has four
measuring points. The load frame works with its mass as a counterpart, which can move freely. The
dynamic uncoupling takes place by means of springs. The testing frequencies can be influenced by
removable unbalanced masses.
Type of loading Rotating bending
Frequency range 10 ... 50 Hz
Nominal load 2 … 10 kNm
Typical application Fatigue limit tests on wheels, wheel flanges and flange bearings
Controller EXCITING MOT