SIMULATION OF PARABOLIC LEAF SPRING FOR HEAVY COMMERCIAL VEHICLE USING FEA

Leaf springs are special kind of spring used in automobile suspension system mostly. The automobile industry has shown increased interest in the replacement of steel spring with fiber glass composite leaf spring because of high strength to weight ratio. Composite materials have different properties which are attracting researche r s and being solution of such issue. This work is carried out on a multi leaf spring having 12 leaves used by a heavy commercial ve hicle . It includes five full length leaves in which one is with eyed ends and seven graduated length leaves. Dimension of the composite leaf spring are to be taken as same dimension of the conventional leaf spring. The FE model of the leaf spring has been generated in Creo 2.0 and imported in ANSYS - 15 for finite element analysis, which are most popular CAE tools. The objective is compare the load carrying capacit y, stress, deflection and weight saving of composite leaf spring wi th that of steel spring.