In order to improve the fatigue lift of a lower control arm in the vehicle suspension, a new shape optimization procedure is presented. In this approach, the shape control point concept is introduced to reduce the numbers of shape design variables. Also, the two-level orthogonal way is employed to evaluate the design sensitivity of fatigue life with respect to those shape design variables, because the analytical design sensitivity information is not directly supplied from the commercial CAE softwares. In this approach, only the six design variables are used to approximate the shape of lower control arm. Then, performed are only 10 fatigue life analyses including the baseline design, 8 DOE models and the final design. The final design, the best combination obtained from the sensitivity information, can maximize the fatigue lift nearly two times as that of the baseline design, while reducing the 12 percentage of weight than it.
