MODELLING & ANALYSIS OF HELICAL COIL SPRING UNDER DIFFERENT LOAD CONDITION BY USING FEM

Currently, the automobile industries have challenges of improvements in their product quality and its performance together with the weight reduction and cost reduction. Automobile industries directed their efforts towards the use of alternative materials which results in increase of strength to weight ratio. The use of composite materials is new trend in the design of automobile components due to their light weight and costs. The present work attempts to check the feasibility of select composite materials in the design of helical coil spring used in automobile suspension systems. The design of helical coil spring is first analysed for SAE 9254 material and then compared with that of for the composite – Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastics material. The modelling of the helical spring has been done using Solidworks 2013 and simulations were performed using ANSYS R16.1 to find the stresses, deflections at the stated loads. It was observed that the stresses developed in CFRP material helical coil spring is lower as compared to the stresses developed in SAE 9254 material helical coil spring. The results indicate that composite materials are feasible option at normal loading conditions