The main goal of this paper is to present the methodology used at the Amazon Program, Ford South America Operations, to meet durability requirement for the Lower Control Arm Rear Bushing component which is being currently used by a McPherson Front Suspension.
The durability target is defined based upon the expected functional useful vehicle life of 10 (ten) years and it reflects directly on the customer satisfaction level.
In parallel, there are others requirements that need to be met as well such as Suspension Compliance, Transmissibility, Package, Manufacturability, Timing and Cost.
Trade-off study has to be performed in order to weight each requirement and accomplish the best compromise among them.
In order to meet durability requirement, an integrated approach is used considering the Road Load Data obtained from the first prototype and ending with a robust Component Rig-Test specification correlating component and vehicle performances.
This paper intends to define this methodology having as a background the lessons learned the authors have acquired during the program development