• Composites Research
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.386-391
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• 2013

In this paper, a carbon fiber/epoxy composite-aluminum hybrid wheel for passenger cars was suggested for better performance and a prototype was fabricated and tested. Adhesive bonding between aluminum part and a composite rim part was used, and the bonding length and thickness were determined by finite element analysis. For self alignment and the function of bonding jig the special structure with a groove and a protrusion was applied. To evaluate the performance of the hybrid wheel various FE analyses were carried out. Inner and outer molds were prepared for the composite rim part and the thermoformed composite part was bonded to the aluminum part. Vibration tests revealed that the hybrid wheel had 16% higher resonance frequency and 32% higher damping capacity with 10% weight reduction.