FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF COMPOSITE LEAF SPRING

Leaf springs are the suspension components used in the automobile industry. For conservation of natural resources and to economize energy,weigh t reduction has been the focus of automobile Industries. Weight is the main issue rel ated to the automobile industry. Thus automobile manufacturers are giving importance to r eduction of weight. While reducing weight of the component designer has to think about increasing or maintaining strength of the component. Composite materials are basically hybrid materials formed of multiple materials in order to utilize their individual structural advantages in a single structural material. The interest of the automobile industry in the replacement of steel spr ing with composite leaf spring has increased because of the better qualities of the composite ma terials. The weight of the leaf spring may be reduced by using composite materials without compro mising the load carrying capacity and stiffness of spring. The current leaf spring is mad e up of multiple plates with steel material. Steel leaf spring has high weight,low natural freq uency,high corrosion,more noise and the properties of material are changing when subjected to various loads. Thus current multiple leaf spring needs to be replaced or changed. Various advanced composite materials offer signific ant advantages in strength,stiffness,high natural frequency and light weight relative to conv entional metallic materials. In this paper the steel leaf spring is compared with composite leaf s pring and the results are mentioned. https://www.ijiert.org/paper-details?paper_id=14053