Application of Infrared Imaging Technology in Fatigue Failure Prediction of Vehicle Wheel in Wheel Bending Fatigue Test

Abstract

Bending fatigue test of vehicle wheel is the main test to verify the mechanics performance of spoke. The wheel is fastened to the bending fatigue test platform with bolts in the bending fatigue test. A cyclic bending moment is applied to the wheel, and after some number of cycles, fatigue failure will happen. In this paper, the bending fatigue test is carried out on a steel wheel and a wheel made of long glass fiber reinforced thermoplastic (LGFT) wheel, and infrared imager is used to monitor the temperature distribution and variation of wheels under bending loads in the test process. After the test, it is found that there are cracks at the highest-temperature spots. In addition, because some cracks of LGFT wheel are too tiny to be found, it’s convenient to search those cracks according to the high-temperature areas in infrared images. All above indicate that it is practicable to predict fatigue failure area by monitoring temperature distribution and variation in wheel bending fatigue test. A method for real-time prediction of fatigue failure area in wheel bending fatigue test is described in this paper, which is also helpful to real-time prediction of fatigue failure area in fatigue tests of other products.