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Composite materials are a natural choice for automotive applications where mechanical performance and lightweight are required. Nevertheless, attention should be directed to the defects into the material. This paper presents the building up of a Structural Health Monitoring system based on a piezoelectric transducers network: a continuous data system acquisition has been carried out in order to detect the presence of faults inside the analyzed structure. A piezoceramic patch has been coupled to a host structure in composite, to characterize the acquisition and the transmission of a wave signal on the material. The importance of this advanced technology research and the positive results obtained in the case study constitute the starting point for future application of piezoelectric-based Structural Health Monitoring systems over real industrial components.

This paper presents a complete overview of the computational design of an advanced suspension control arm constructed of composite material for light weighting purposes. The proposed methodology presented in detail is split into 3 phases. Phase 1 or Vehicle Performance Simulation, in which basic modelling and a sensibility study is performed to better understand the advantages of unsprung mass reduction (compared to sprung mass reduction) with respect to the vehicle’s vertical dynamics. It followed by the development and utilization of a multibody approach to evaluate the full-vehicle response to different dynamic maneuvers, such as harsh road imperfections, sine sweep steering, and double lane change tests. The impact of the improved suspension control arm is highlighted in detail, and the loads to which it is subjected are computed to serve as inputs for the successive phases.