Investigation on design and fabrication of continuous fiber reinforced composite helical spring for automobile suspension

Abstract

Spring is an elastic body whose function is to store energy when deflected by force and return equivalent amount of energy on being released. Helical compression springs are widely used for suspension in light vehicle and locomotives worldwide. Automobile manufacturer are looking for replacing existing metal spring by composite spring due to its high strength to weight ratio. In this study the design parameters indicate that there is considerable weight saving is possible and increase the stiffness of the spring by reducing the number of coils and increasing the area of the spring. The filament winding technique is used to fabricate the continuous fiber reinforced composite helical spring. The weight of the composite spring obtained is 42.63 % less than the conventional metal spring. Stiffness of the composite spring is 43.76% less compared to conventional metal spring. Even though stiffness of the composite helical spring is less when compared to conventional metal spring, the spring is designed with less number of coils to increase the stiffness without sacrifice the strength or load carrying capacity of the spring.