Have you ever seen a plastic wheel before? The plastic wheel or we normally call them sport rims here in Malaysia, are developed now in Germany.

The first thing car enthusiasts will do with their car is to change their stock wheels. They normally change them to better, bigger and lighter alloy rims. With the development of the plastic rims, car enthusiasts now have another option. Unfortunately the rims are not yet approved due to lack of suitable testing methods.

All wheels are made to withstand a lot of punishment such as curb impact, potholes and road salt before they can be fitted to cars and they have to meet certain quality requirement. There is still doubt whether the testing methods for metal wheels can be applied to fiber-reinforced plastics.

Fret not because BTE Hybrid-Tech in 2001 has produced fiber-plastic composite that has been tested successfully over distances of 250,000 kilometers. Thus I think it won’t be long before plastic wheels are introduced widely in the market.

Apart from BTE Hybrid-Tech, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt are developing a simulation method which reliably predicts the quality of the rims. To learn more on the process just visit this link. [via carblog.co.za]