Abstract
Latest automotive components are lighter, providing higher fuel efficiency and performance. Following this current trend in lightweight components, this study proposes a structural optimization design method for the upper control arm installed at the rear side of an SUV. The shape of the upper control arm was determined by applying the suggest design process. This study considers the static strength of the upper control arm in the optimization process. The kriging interpolation method is adopted to obtain the minimum weight satisfying the static strength constraint. Then, for the optimized control arm, its durability analysis was performed. MSC.fatigue is used to assess the durability life of the upper control arm because it is one of the most important criteria in automotive industry. In addition, real experiments on a 1/4 car module is conducted to validate the FEM analysis. Lastly, the durability analysis of a full car was performed by using the ETA-VPG.
Keywords: control arm, shape optimization, kriging, 1/4 car module, weak model, VPG (Virtual Proving Ground)