Development of a Composite Leaf Spring for a Light Commercial Vehicle (Tata Magic)

Present time the main issue of automobile industry are weight reduction. The automobile industry has looking for any implementation or modification to reduce the weight of the vehicle. The suspension leaf spring is one of the potential items for weight reduction in automobile as it accounts for 10% to 20% of the unsprung weight. The introduction of composite leaf spring made of glass fiber rein forced plastic (GFRP) has made it to possible to reduce the weight of spring without any reduction on load carrying capacity and stiffness. The achievement of weight reduction with adequate improvement of mechanical properties has made composite a very good replacement material for conventional steel spring. This work deals with the replacement of multileaf steel spring with mono composite leaf spring for the LCV. Suspension system in an automobile determines the riding comfort of passengers and the amount of damage to the vehicle. The main function of leaf spring assembly as suspension element is not only to support vertical load, but also to isolate road-induced vibrations. the behavior of leaf spring is complicated due to its clamping effects and inter-leaf contact etc. the objective of this paper is to replace the multi-leaf steel spring by mono composite leaf spring for the same load carrying capacity and stiffness. Since the composite materials have more elastic strain energy storage capacity and high strength-to-weight ratio as compared to those of steel. It is possible to reduce the weight of the leaf spring without any reduction on load carrying capacity and stiffness. The design constraints were limiting stresses and displacement. Modeling and analysis of both the steel and composite leaf springs have been done using ANSYS software. KeywordsComposite Materials, Leaf Spring, Material Property, FEA, ANSYS, and Pro-E.