Performance Analysis of Steel Leaf Spring with Crack

Abstract

Leaf Spring is one of the oldest forms of suspension units employed in automobiles. To meet the needs of natural resource conservation and energy economy, automobile manufacturers have been attempting to reduce the weight of vehicles in recent years. Extensive research has been made in this area by researchers and engineer so as to reduce the weight of the suspension unit still satisfying the demand of Smooth and safe ride quality. Researchers and engineers are working on applying various design and material combination to satisfy the design criteria and reduce the weight of the unit. The design failure occurs either during service or after its life is completed. The failure in service occurs either due to extreme conditions or due to manufacturing defects. This Failure can be catastrophic. One of these failures is due to Cracks in leaf Springs. These cracks are present either on surface or beneath. These are in very minute size. During Service this crack expands and when it reach surface the component may fail catastrophically over the period of time during service. An effort has been made to analyze the effect of Crack on the Stress generation in a Leaf Spring. Also, modal analysis will be performed to analyze the effect of crack on the natural frequency of the leaf spring. The case is analyzed analytically, using simulation in ANSYS and the results will be validated by experimental testing on UTM for Leaf Spring with and without Crack. The Maximum bending stress is calculated for Leaf spring. Keywords—Bending Stress, Crack, Leaf Spring, Modal analysis