DESIGN AND MODIFICATION OF LEAF SRING BY FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

ABSTRACT:-Leaf springs are one of the oldest suspension components they are still frequently used, especially in commercial vehicles. Weight reduction is now the main issue in automobile industries. In the present work, existing mono steel leaf spring of a Tata Bus is taken for modelling and analysis. Finite element method has been implemented to modify the existing leaf spring with considering the dynamic loading. This work involves design and analysis of a conventional leaf spring under static and dynamic loading conditions. The 3D model is prepared in Creo 1.0, and then analysis is performed in the ANSYS 11.0 by considering same load in static and dynamic loading. For the cost reduction in existing leaf spring modification carried out by iteration method considering three cases such as varying number of leaves, varying width and varying thickness. The optimisation has been carried out to satisfy the permissible value of factor of safety. The results are verified by comparison of Analytical and Finite Element Method. All analytically calculated values of deflection and stresses are closely matching with values obtained from ANSYS software.