Enhancing structural components by implementing sensors offers great potential regarding condition monitoring for lifetime analysis, predictive maintenance and automatic adaptation to environmental conditions. This article describes an approach to determining the operational forces applied to the front suspension arm of a car using strain gauges. Since suspension arms are components with free-form surfaces, an analytical calculation of applied forces by means of measured strains is not feasible. Hence, artificial neural networks are applied to approximate the functional relationship. The results reveal how artificial neural networks can be applied to identify load conditions on structural components and, therefore, deliver essential data for condition monitoring.