Elements of a car suspension system more and more often are made of light and firm aluminium alloys. The lightweight suspension enables reducing the total weight of the car and the fuel consumption; in addition, it enables improving controllability and stability of the car on a road. In the Paper, transverse arms that are the principal elements of the front axle “McPherson” suspension system are discussed upon. The external forces that impact the suspension arms on driving a car upon different modes are analyzed. In course of analysis of prototypes of the front suspension arms in cars PEUGEOT 406 and BMW 3, the causes of dangerous stresses in certain points of the arm’s structure and the opportunities of optimization of suspension arms were analyzed. The external forces that impact the car suspension were established; on the base of the above-mentioned guiding elements (arms) of a car suspension, computer models were developed upon applying the computer-aided simulation package “SolidWorks 2009”. Striving to get to know the real marks of the alloys and to bring the simulation more in line with the real conditions, chemical analysis of metals and tests on metal hardness were carried out. Simulation of loads of L-shaped steel and aluminium alloy arms of various profiles was performed as well. On the base of the results, the most dangerous points in arm structure were detected. The recommenda-tions and proposals for improving the structure of alumini-um alloy arms in order to make them able to withstand large external forces were provided.
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