Lightweight design of an automotive lower control arm using topology optimization for forming process

The global environmental regulations have become very strict nowadays, thus most
car manufacturers aim to fulfil such restrictions by different strategies including lightweight
technologies that contain design, advanced materials and manufacturing. Hereby, optimally
designed geometries of structural components needs to be conformed to their functional
requirements and manufacturing process. In this work, a topology optimization (TO) was
performed for weight reduction and performance improvement of a lower control arm (LCA)
of vehicle suspension. First, FE simulations of the recently used LCA were performed under
different load cases according to the actual application. The resulted stress distribution and
overall stiffness were gathered as the baseline reference. Then, TO procedure was carried out
and critical regions for load carrying were classified. In addition, the member-size constraint
was applied to enable a LCA layout, which can be likely produced by metal forming process.
The introduced optimization method serves as a guidance in practice for the lightweight design
of other automotive stamping parts.