Design, Analysis and Experimental Investigation of Composite Leaf Spring

Leaf spring is part of suspension system used in most of vehicles and makes the vehicle heavier due to conventional steel material. The Automobile industry has concentrated and given former interest to substitute that conventional materials like steel in replace with other material due to various reasons like different mechanical properties. Lot of research has been going on to replace leaf spring with Composite materials. Composite materials are satisfying various demands of automobile researchers as it having good elastic properties, high strength to weight ratio, less weight compared to steel material. The aim of this paper is to focus on various issues like weight, stresses while designing, modeling and experimental investigation of composite leaf spring. In the present work stress and deflection analysis of leaf spring are calculated by finite element analysis. The leaf springs are analyzed in ANSYS 14.5 for stresses and deflections. The results shows from different calculations and data observed that, for the similar load carrying capacity induced stresses and deflections get minimized when steel leaf spring is replaced by fibrous composite (E-Glass/epoxy) leaves. The analysis was carried by considering model of Force Motors Trax Cruiser’s leaf spring with same dimensional geometry, for reduction in weight of leaf spring. E-glass/epoxy composite material is selected for leaf spring, which is more cost effective with same mechanical and dimensional properties of steel leaf spring. The analysis was carried out on ANSYS 14.5 with same loading condition for deflection and bending stress of steel as well as E-glass/epoxy composite material. A comparative study has been made between steel and composite leaf spring with respect to strength and weight. From the static analysis and experimental results it is found composite leaf springs have lesser displacements and stresses than that of conventional steel leaf spring. The weight of the leaf spring is minimized extremely about 71.73 % after replacing steel leaf spring with composite leaf spring.