Design and analysis of composite Leaf Spring for light Weight Vehicle

Abstract

In recent year automobile industries are mostly concentrating on weight reduction and in improving the riding quality. To reduce vehicle weight, three techniques have been studied rationalizing the body structure, utilizing light weight materials for parts and decreasing the size of the vehicles. In this approach by introducing composite materials into automobile industries, which is having low cost, high strength to weight ratio and excellent corrosive resistance can fulfill the requirement. The suspension leaf spring is one of the potential entities for weight reduction in automobiles as it results in large unstrung mass. The introduction of fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) is used to reduce the weight of the product without any reduction on load carrying capacity and spring rate. As the materials high strain energy storage capacity and high strength-to-weight ratio compared to steel, multi-leaf springs are being replaced by mono-leaf FRP spring.FRP springs also have excellent fatigue resistance and durability.