STATIC STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF SUSPENSION ARM USING FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

Abstract

The function of suspension system is to absorb vibrations due to rough terrains or road disturbances and to provide stability under circumstances like accelerating, cornering, uneven road, braking, loading and unloading etc. Control arm is one of the most important part of the suspension system, as it joins the steering knuckle to the vehicle frame. Also suspension arm is responsible for up and down movement of wheels when hitting bumps. It is also designed to maximize the friction between tire contacts, patch the road surface to provide vehicle stability under any circumstances. It can be seen in many types of the suspensions like wishbone or double wishbone suspensions. Many times it is also called as A-type control arm. In this study control arm was reverse engineered. Reverse engineering refers to the process of obtaining a CAD model from an existing physical part. CAD model was prepared using CATIA v5 software and finite element analysis was done using ANSYS 14.5 software by importing the parasolid file to ANSYS. The model is subjected to loading and boundary conditions and then analyzed using the FEA techniques. The static structural analysis was done to find out the stress, deformation and safety factor of component. The model was meshed using 10-noded tetrahedral elements. Result obtained from the analysis were studied to check whether the design is safe or not. In some cases the stresses becomes more than safe limit. In that case optimization approach is carried out to increase the structural strength of the component. In this case maximum von-misses stress is 211 MPa which is below the yield strength of the material.