Abstract: Considering the lightweight and high-strength properties of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP), the lightweight design method of suspension control arm using carbon fiber reinforced plastic instead of steel was studied. The CFRP control arm was designed based on the principle of equal stiffness, and the structural properties of the two types of control arm were analyzed. On this basis, the orthogonal array design was used to optimize the stacking sequence of CFRP control arm. The results show that the carbon fiber composite control arm achieved a mass reduction of 48.32% compared with the original steel control arm under the premise of meeting the requirements of the stiffness. The strength performance of CFRP control arm was greatly improved. Moreover, the proposed method is proved to be effective for lightweight design of suspension control arm.

Key words: equal stiffness principle, CFRP, suspension control arm, orthogonal array design, lightweight