F2010B074
A Study on the Development of Automotive Front Lower Arm by Using Hybrid Manufacturing Process
This paper presents an investigation on the mechanical characteristics of automotive front lower arm by using hybrid manufacturing process, and verifies the properties of tryout method in fabricating casting for front lower arm. Recently, although there have been many researches for assembly through hybrid materials, they are still not enough to apply to production. To increase the competitiveness of the domestic automotive front lower arm, the ultra-lightweight, high-intensity, environmentally-friendly technology which is now the world tendency should be developed. To make the automotive front lower arm competitive, the development of lower arm parts is required along with the optimized cast node. Most of the domestic front lower arm is manufactured by the press method which makes upper panel and lower panel by press stamping before welding two pieces. The lower arm is the important complementary parts which is mounted on the cross member parts and knuckle, and reduces the impact from the ground. Ahead of beginning this study, benchmarked some foreign production methods as a precedent research and the production method is in correspondence with the front lower arm design. Base on this, the detail design has been carried out after considering geometry dimensions of the form. The manufacturing process engineering is being performed by the technical innovation of some advanced countries. In this study is aim for parts upgrade with hybrid technology. In case of a successful research, it will be applied to be front sub-frame, rear cross member and other chassis parts as well as front lower arm and contribute to the lightweight automotive parts and the improvement of technology. The tryout is corresponded with front lower arm test method and the research of test method to achieve the reliability of parts combination through hybrid materials. By means of the development of the hybrid lower arm for automobiles, the 20% lightweight decrease has been achieved compared with steel parts. And after completing the product design, it was verified by analysis and simulations of structure, durability, buckling, In this result, the real evaluation test proved of the analysis and tests by the final performance test in comparison with the current parts, through the tryout. Therefore, the purpose of this study is accomplishing the ultra-lightweight hybrid front lower arm by generalizing the skills in the front lower arm field and lightweight-reduce field where have been studied sporadically until now.
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Poster presentation: Vehicle design and development