An Improved Control Arm Design for a Commercial Vehicle

Abstract

Suspension linkages are one of the fundamental structural elements in each vehicle since they connect the wheel carriers i.e. axles to the body of the vehicle. Moreover, the characteristics of suspension linkages within a suspension system can directly affect driving safety, comfort and economics. Beyond these, all these design criteria are bounded to the package space of the vehicle. In last decades, suspension linkages have been focused on in terms of design development and cost reduction. In this study, a control arm of a diesel public bus was taken into account in order to get the most cost-effective design while improving the strength within specified boundary conditions. Due to the change of the supplier, the control arm of a rigid axle was redesigned to find an economical and more durable solution. The new design was analyzed first by the finite element analysis software Ansys and the finite element model of the control arm was validated by physical tensile tests. The outputs of the study demonstrate that the new design geometry reduces the maximum Von Mises stress 15% while being within the elastic region of the material in use and having found an economical solution in terms of supplier’s criteria.