Steel automotive wheel rims are subject to wear and tear, down to the end of their service life. Manufacturers use standard destructive tests to determine the probable lifetime of the car wheel rim. With this approach, to predict the remaining use time, it is necessary to know the initial parameters of the wheel rim, actual mileage, and its use characteristics, which is difficult information to obtain in the real world. Moreover, this work shows that a vehicle's technical condition can affect the rim's remaining service time. This work describes a new method of precise binary identification of the technical condition of steel car wheel rims using the dispersion of damping factors which result from experimental modal analysis. This work also proposes a new method of indicating the approaching end of wheel rim service life with limited parameters: run-out, average of damping factors, and dispersion of damping factors. The proposed procedure requires two sequential examinations of the rim in standard periods related to the average annual mileage of the vehicle. On this basis, it is possible to indicate the approaching end of the life of the steel rims about 10,000 km in advance.
Keywords: data fusion; dispersion of damping factors; steel; technical condition; wheel rim.