Suspension system

Suspensions of an automobile system represents a vital component of the car system as it is involved in
the car safety and comfort. It is responsible for absorbing forces and damping vibrations which arises
during the automobile drive and tends to produce a smooth and uniform drive. These are also involved
in maximizing friction between the road and the tires, produce improved handling of the automobile
and hence passenger comfort.

While cars are traveling on a bumpy road, they may experience a lot of vertical acceleration due to
uneven patches of the road. This vertical acceleration is transferred to the main frame of the car and in
case of higher magnitude or repeated collisions can cause severe damage to the main frame or other
parts of the car. So, our cars need a compact structure which could absorb that vertical force in such a
way that the cars mainframe remains undisturbed and tends to produce a smooth drive as we move
along the road.

The main components of the suspension system include shock absorber, arm/linkages and knuckle.
Under dynamic conditions all of these parts play their role to stabilize the vehicle during high speed,
braking or cornering.

Aims and Objectives

In order to predict the efficiency and behavior of the vehicle suspension system finite element analysis
on CEA is used which also serves as the objective of our work. However, the main aim is to develop a
sense of understanding and working of the structures and how it can be improved and incorporated into
the vehicle system for increased performance and efficiency.

Team activities and Member roles

Table 1: Team activities and Member roles

Date Activity
20/08/2019 Group making
27/08/2019 Taking measurements of the suspension system
of the modal in the lab started by all members
30/08/2019 Research began by all the members to
understand the basic knowledge of a suspension
system.
03/09/2019 Working on the CAD modeling was started by all
the members.
12/09/2019 Engineering drawings were done.
17/09/2019 Started assembling the parts each member
created.
01/10/2019 All the parts and Assembly were imported to
ANSYS
02/10/2019 Meshing was done to the supination system using
ANSYS.
 05/10/2019 Deformation, stress and stain were analyzed after
applying the weight of the car to the suspension
system.
07/10/2019 Modal analysis and topology study were
successfully done.
10/10/2019 Report writing started
30/10/2019 Oral presentation was successfully done.
02/11/2019 CAE report submitted

Methodology

Before diving deep into the solution of the FEA problem we need to develop a thorough understanding
of the working of the suspension system and chalk out vital areas regarding stress and undergoing
deformation. All the group members developed deep insight of the basic working principle of the
suspension system which also enabled to derive the boundary conditions for the problem.

To model the suspension system geometry SOLIDWORKS software was used because of its easy
interface and user-friendly features. The geometry with precise dimensions after being made was
imported into the ANSYS software for analysis.

Designing of 3D Geometry

Because several students were involved in this project so an effective practice was to distribute different
components between the group members to ease the load of the complex modeling.

The table given below shows which particular part was designed by which student but it doesn’t involve
the minute details (small parts) of the 3D geometry. After all the sub-parts were created they were
assembled to form the final part.