Development of Aluminum Control Arm Applied for Curved Profile Extrusion Process 2009-01-0554

Aluminum extruded materials have been mostly used only a few automotive parts until now, such as roof rail, sunroof frame and bumper beams. However, aluminum extruded materials have been being increased in suspension parts, especially, lower control arm. Most of aluminum suspension parts could be obtained by straight profile extrusion and stretch bending and forming technology but the cost of production is a little bit high due to complex forming process. In this paper, curved profile extrusion technology was applied for cost reduction and higher quality guarantee by removing forming process. It has been fabricated curved extruded profile used by curved profile extrusion equipment for removing bending process and designed control arm with optimized profile for taking off forming process. For curved profile extrusion and excellent quality, it has been optimized extrusion condition by controlling and combining extrusion speed and traverse moving speed and distance. For check of durability of control arm, it has been carried out module durability test and the results were satisfied