Design and Analysis of Leaf Springs with Structural Steel and Chromium Vanadium Steel

Abstract

Abstract: Leaf springs are part of the suspension system on most vehicles and add weight to vehicles due to the traditional steel material. The automotive industry is interested in replacing traditional materials such as steel with other materials for various reasons, such as different mechanical properties. Intensive research is being carried out into replacing the leaf spring with a composite material. The composite material meets various test requirements of automotive standard due to its good elastic properties, high strength-to-weight ratio and lighter weight than steel. The purpose of the article is to focus on various topics such as weight, stresses during construction, modelling and experimental testing of composite leaf springs. In this work, the stress and deflection analysis of the leaf spring is calculated using the finite element method. Leaf springs are analyzed for stress and deflection in ANSYS 14.5. The results show, based on various calculations and observed data that with similar load capacities, induced stresses and deformations are minimized by replacing the steel leaf springs with fibre composite leaves. The analysis was performed considering the leaf spring engine model with the same dimension geometry to reduce the leaf spring weight. A composite material is chosen for the leaf spring. The analysis was performed on the ANSYS 14.5 spring with the same load condition as the steel and composite leaf springs in terms of strength and weight. From the static analysis and test results, after the design change and stress analysis, the composite leaf springs were minimized by about 71.73% and the stress was reduced by 50-80%.