What is the development history of automotive wheels?

2024-11-19

The development process of automobile wheels is as follows:

The wheel can be traced back to 6,000 years ago. Initially, the wheel was made of a rolling log. Later, people found that it was more convenient and effective to use wooden stakes for rolling to move heavy objects. In the 1st century BC, the Romans used wooden strips to support wooden wheels and created the early carriage wheels.
In 1886, Benz installed an engine on a three-wheeled carriage, giving birth to the world's first automobile. Its wheels were inherited from carriages and had numerous spokes. At that time, the rim, wheel hub, and spokes were separable and not integrated.

Iron Wheels: At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the development of the iron smelting and iron products industries, iron rims gradually replaced wooden rims. In the early stage, the iron rims were mainly wire rims. Later, rims made of stamped iron and the outer ring part welded together emerged. Iron wheels were relatively heavy, but their mechanical properties were better than those of wooden rims. However, wire rims performed poorly when subjected to lateral forces, so wheel hub caps were introduced to protect the wires and enhance the appearance.
Steel Wheels: At the beginning of the 20th century, with the improvement of the industrial level, the wheel hub and tire gradually evolved into their current forms. The emergence of metal wheels and rubber-treaded tires greatly improved the safety of vehicles. In the early days, most of the metal wheels were made of iron or steel. Although they had high strength and were suitable for rough and bumpy roads, their heavy weight affected the improvement of vehicle speed.

In 1924, the Bugatti Type 356B racing car was the first to use cast aluminum alloy rims for automobiles. However, the early aluminum alloy rims were not mass-produced on a large scale. In the 1950s, car manufacturers began to use aluminum alloy brake drum shells combined with iron outer rings as a transitional form of rims.
In the 1960s, integrally manufactured aluminum alloy rims began to be mass-produced. Aluminum alloy wheels have the advantages of energy saving, safety, and comfort, such as being lightweight, having high heat dissipation efficiency, and excellent shock absorption performance. Compared with steel wheels, they can effectively reduce the weight of the vehicle, thereby improving acceleration, braking, and handling performance, and thus are increasingly favored and gradually popularized.

Casting Process: In the early days, most of the aluminum alloy wheels were manufactured by sand casting. Later, it developed to low-pressure precision casting and other processes. Low-pressure precision casting is carried out under a low pressure of 0.1 MPa for precision casting. It has good formability, clear contours, uniform density, and a smooth surface. It can achieve high strength, lightweight, and better control of costs, and has become the mainstream manufacturing method for high-quality aluminum alloy wheels.
Forging Process: The whole aluminum ingot is directly extruded and formed on the mold by a thousand-ton press. The wheels produced by this process have uniform density, smooth and detailed surfaces, thin wheel walls and are lightweight. The material strength is more than 30% higher than that of the casting method. However, due to the need for more sophisticated production equipment and a relatively low yield, the manufacturing cost is relatively high.

In the past, the wheel bearings of cars were mostly used in pairs of single-row tapered roller or ball bearings. Later, they developed to the widespread use of car wheel bearing units. The wheel bearing unit has evolved from the first generation composed of double-row angular contact bearings to the second generation with a flange on the outer raceway for fixing the bearing, and then to the third generation with inner and outer flanges designed in cooperation with the anti-lock braking system, making car maintenance easier.

In the early days, the appearance of automobile wheels was mainly for practical purposes. Wooden rims would be painted or varnished, and iron rims would be equipped with electroplated wheel hub caps to increase the appearance and luxury feeling. There were different types of wheel hub caps such as full-coverage and semi-coverage.
With the development of automobile culture and people's pursuit of personalization, the styles of wheels have become more and more diversified. Besides meeting the functional requirements, they have also become an important part of automobile appearance modification, giving rise to a large number of manufacturers specializing in automobile wheel modification. Consumers can choose wheels of different shapes, colors, and sizes according to their own preferences and vehicle styles.