Green 3D-printed lattice-shaped suspension arms for RC cars

This study offers benchmark recommendations for designing lattice-shaped plastic suspension arms for remote-controlled (RC) automobiles in an environmentally sustainable manner. The main goals of sustainable and green design are to reduce the use of materials, minimise waste, and achieve a high-performance suspension system. A McPherson front suspension arm is designed with solid and optimised shapes and fabricated by fused deposition modelling (FDM) 3D printing. Solid, re-entrant honeycomb, face-centred cubic, hexagonal honeycomb, hexagonal prism diamond, simple cubic, triangular honeycomb, and lattice from a volume mesh are implemented on suspension arms in RC cars to investigate the effects of structural geometries on flexural strength and frequency response. Finite element analysis and experiment procedure are conducted to examine the deformation in four modes frequency shapes and critical areas in the suspension arms. The obtained results illustrate the relationships between the mass or stiffness and the vibration frequency. Graphical abstract