Abstract
Non-pneumatic wheels have been widely used instead of general tube type wheels beause of many reasons, for example, wheel size, price restriction, heavy-duty problem and so on. Almost small size wheels or casters were non-pneumatic type but structural stability was not certified. This paper presents a double structured non-pneumatic wheel, called "smart caster", which consisted with inner and outer wheels connected by chips, and finite element analysis processes were conducted in order to determine important dwsign factors before actual design for mass production. For structural analysis ABAQUS was used under various boundary conditions with incrementally varied loads until 2,000N. Then structural staility was evaluated according to varied loads below ultimate stress. Generally stresses were concentrated at the lower parts of the wheel, and especially contact parts between wheel and ground. In addition, maximum stress appeared at contact parts between the wheel lower part and chips.
