Reducing cyclic testing time for components of automotive suspension system utilising the wavelet transform and the Fuzzy C-Means

•It discuses ability of data editing recognising the pattern of fatigue life.•FCM was utilised to detect segments having lower energy to shorten strain signal.•It successfully created new strain signal retaining the original load sequence.•The testing time was reduced by more than 33 % with equivalent fatigue life.•No such technique was previously proposed to accelerate a fatigue test. This study aims to introduce a novel method for accelerating fatigue tests. Strain signals measured at automotive suspension components were extracted based on the Morlet wavelet producing damaging segments. Furthermore, the segments were clustered using the Fuzzy C-Means to remove the segments having lower energy. The process was able to shorten the strain signals up to 41.4% and it was able to retain at least 90% of the fatigue damage. It reduced the testing time by more than 33%, with equivalent fatigue life. Indirectly, the use of modified strain signals could reduce device operating costs.