DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE LEAF SPRING IN LIGHT VEHICLE

This project describes design and experimental analysis of composite leaf spring made of glass fiber reinforced polymer. The objective is to compare the load carrying capacity, stiffness and weight savings of composite leaf spring with that of steel leaf spring. The design constraints are stresses and deflections. The dimensions of an existing conventional steel leaf spring of a light commercial vehicle are taken. Same dimensions of conventional leaf spring are used to fabricate a composite multi leaf spring using EGlass/Epoxy unidirectional laminates. Static analysis of 2D model of conventional leaf spring is also performed using ANSYS 10 and compared with experimental results. Finite element analysis with full load on 3-D model of composite multi leaf spring is done using ANSYS 10 and the analytical results are compared with experimental results. Compared to steel spring, the composite leaf spring is found to have 67.35% lesser stress, 64.95% higher stiffness and 126.98% higher natural frequency than that of existing steel leaf spring. A weight reduction of 76.4% is achieved by using optimized composite leaf spring.