If you attach any value to appearances, there’s one thing you’ll know for sure: Any eye-catching look relies on accessories. This kind of thinking is predominantly found in the world of high fashion, but it’ll also be familiar to anyone who’s ever attended a car tuning show. Here, by far the most popular accessory would have to be the rim.
Having developed the steel design wheel, and most recently also the steel/CFRP hybrid wheel, thyssenkrupp Steel Europe is offering some very innovative approaches for the manufacture of visually appealing automotive wheels. Compared to die-cast aluminum wheels, these new designs are also very convincing in terms of costs, weight, and CO2 footprint.
The sheet metal-based modular steel wheel combines a unibody base with a rim and an additional load-bearing designer shell connected to the wheel. With the hybrid wheel made of steel and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), the latter is used for the rim, whereas the wheel spider itself is a multi-wall steel design.
