Design Methodology Investigation For Development Of Car Suspension Control Arms

The development period of new car should be shortened to follow the fast changes in the automotive market. In the recent years, all the automotive companies, both home and abroad, are committing to combining with many ways, including computer simulation, bench test and road test, etc, to ensure the popular new car with lowest cost and reliable quality in the shortest period. It's one developed industry both in home and abroad for the research and development of automotive components with lots of advantages, such as fast research and development, modular supply and low cost. With the virtual development, optimization and validation by CAD/CAE software, it can shorten the period of research and development and reduce the cost while widely adopting the computers. There are mainly two ways for research and development in china, one is to localize and supply automotive components according to the complete design from the foreign famous companies, the other one is to do reverse development when deciding the platform from the different companies.This paper discusses the research and development process of automotive components by comparing the similarity between different control arms. And, the comprehensive similarity can be obtained for future research and development, and the validation for design and characteristics can ensure to satisfy the customers'needs by CAE and some necessary tests. In practice, different working conditions, inputs and material technology will constitute the complicated product characteristics, one part of which can be used for the disassembly and validation of the needs'characteristics of the whole car system, the other part can be used in the distribution and field control of pressing, welding, machining and assembly. This paper is trying to establish such system for future research and development.With the description and flexible R&D platform of control arm, this paper collects and categorizes the existing type of control arms, 2D/3D drawings, test methods, CAE reports and test reports to analyze and evaluate the comprehensive performance and find some standard process of research and development for reference.With the hope of establishing one developing platform and mode, the key point of this paper is to understand the system needs of control arm, realize the computerization of the research and development by simulation and build a detailed data platform of control arm for future research and development.