PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE LEAF SPRING IN A DEFENCE SUMO VEHICLE

The composite material has taking place a major role in an automobiles industries. The leaf spring, which is considered for this study is a specially designed leaf spring used in SUMO design by the ordinance factory. The leaf spring which is an automotive component used to absorb vibrations induced during the motion of vehicle. It also acts as a structure to support vertical loading due to the weight of the vehicle and payload. In this study the Finite element method is used for analysing the composite spring for different parameters such us stress, deformation and mode frequencies for three different ratios of epoxy and E fiberglass materials. The composite specimen has been made in the three different ratios of material combination by hand layout moulding technique. The three different samples are 40% epoxy and 60% Efiberglass, 60% epoxy and 40% E-fiberglass, 70% epoxy and 30% E-fiberglass. The experiments were carried out for different test like tensile test, flexural test and hardness test. The experimental results are well within the simulation results and identified that the 40% epoxy and 60% E-fiberg as composite leaf spring is suitable for designing a spring in SUMO vehicle