DESIGN AND OPTIMIZATION OF LOWER CONTROL ARM

Suspension system of an automobile plays an important role in ensuring the stability of the automobile. Another major aspect of suspension system in passenger cars is luxury. A lot of research is going on in this direction to further the development of independent suspension systems for automobiles.In the independent suspension system the control arm plays a major role. It is generally made of forged steel but this material is found to be excessively heavy in the current context of the quest for reducing the weight of the automobiles without any significant changes to design. In this task of designing the control arms with alternative materials Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software being extensively used to perform the topology optimization. The main objective of this study is to reduce the weight of the lower control arm of independent suspension by using topology optimization and material optimization. Static loads were taken into consideration and analysis is done for two different models viz. the existing model and an optimized model developed by topology optimization. Static structural analysis s& modal analysis of lower control arm is carried out by using HYPERWORKS.