Design of the Lower Control Arm of an Electric SUV Front Suspension Based on Multi-Disciplinary Optimization Technology

An electric SUV is designed and developed based on the original traditional fuel vehicle model. The design scheme of the front suspension lower control arm of prototype vehicle is referred to save the development cycle and cost of the design. The original design scheme is optimized to meet the performance and lightweight requirements. In this paper, the analysis model of lower control arm is firstly established based on the finite element technology to conduct free modal analysis. The results show that the first two modes appear as bending and torsion. The modal frequency is higher than excitation frequency, which satisfies the requirement of vibration characteristics. Then free modal test on lower control arm is carried out based on hammer method, and the test results show that the accuracy of the analysis value is high. Then, the front suspension dynamics model of electric SUV model is established to extract the load of lower control arm. The inertial release method is applied to analyze its limit strength, the results show that its maximum stress is lower than its used stress which meets the requirements of strength design. Finally, the multidisciplinary optimal design of lower control arm is carried out to obtain the best design scheme. After optimization, both modal characteristics and strength characteristics meet the design requirements, and its mass is reduced by 16.7%. And its optimization scheme has passed the bench test and road test certificate successfully, so it has high accuracy and feasibility, providing a new idea for the design and development of the lower control arm, the front suspension of electric SUV. (C) 2021 Jordan Journal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. All rights reserved