Design and Analysis of Leaf Spring of Steel and E-Glass Epoxy Composite Material

Abstract

Leaf springs are the oldest form of suspension in automobiles. An accurate modelling of the leaf spring is necessary for rider comfort, breaking performance, vibration characteristics, and stability. Substituting composite structures for conventional metallic structures has many advantages because of higher specific stiffness and strength of composite materials. The automobile industry has shown increased interest in the replacement of steel spring with fiber glass composite leaf spring due to high strength to weight ratio. This work deals with the replacement of conventional steel leaf spring with a mono composite leaf spring using E-Glass/Epoxy. The design parameters were selected and analyzed with the objective of minimizing weight of the composite leaf spring as compared to the steel leaf spring. The leaf spring was modeled by CATIA and analysis was analyzed by using ANSYS 11.0 multi physics software.