Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) FEA Case Study: Structural Analysis
How to decide which loading and hence stuctural analsysis to perform 
We want the wheel to undergo a real world loading, hence an impact type analysis - say the car was running over a 'bump' in the road. This is actually a very complex analsysis to solve 'correctly', discussed next. So, how are we going to achive the analysis? Since cars run on tyres and we want to avoid any peak stressees and observe true or genuine stresses in the wheel, it was decided to react the impact event through a tyre (shown top right) simulated with tyre pressure acting on all internal surfaces and 'pseudo' suspension into an infinitely stiff chassis. The prime objective is to simulate the maximum loads the wheel will see in service, and the loads should be over estimated rather than under estimated making the analysis conservative or pessamistic in nature. It is always advisable (and usually imperative) to establish a datum and verfiy analysis results, this could be via analysisng (with the same method) a component which is known to be effective in service or via empirical testing. When this datum has been established, part optimisation for cost or performance (or both) may be evaluated and improved.