AUTOMOTIVE APPLICATION

COMPOSITE LIGHTWEIGHT AUTOMOTIVE SUSPENSION SYSTEM

Ford-Werke GmbH (Germany) and partners Gestamp (UK), GRM Consulting (UK), University of Warwick (UK)

A structural composite suspension component producing significant weight savings using an industry-first patented prepreg/SMC/steel overmoulded manufacturing process, designed applying newly developed computer-aided engineering (CAE) technology.

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The Composite Lightweight Automotive Suspension System (CLASS) project, successfully delivered a new tieblade-knuckle design, 35% lighter than the multi-piece steel design it replaced. The opportunity was taken to develop an innovative design, which incorporates multiple composite materials (continuous carbon fibre bi-axial and unidirectional epoxy prepregs with discontinuous carbon fibre/vinyl ester SMC) in combination with a steel insert. The CAE analysis tools created specifically to support the development of this innovative design were used to optimize material usage (composite and steel) in one step, based on component strength, stiffness and durability. Extensive in-mould instrumentation was used to generate critical parametric data that was fed into the multi-loop post-processing analysis necessary to optimize the moulding cycle time.