DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF LEAF SPRING BY USING COMPOSITE MATERIAL FOR LIGHT VEHICLES

Reducing weight while increasing or maintaining strength of products is getting to be highly important research issue in this modern world. Composite materials are one of the material families which are attracting researchers and being solutions of such issue. In this paper we describe design and analysis of composite leaf spring. For this purpose, a rear leaf spring for MAHINDRA “MODEL-COMMANDER 650 DI” is considered. The objective is to compare the stresses, deformations and weight saving of composite leaf spring with that of steel leaf spring. The design constraint is stiffness. The Automobile Industry has great interest for replacement of steel leaf spring with that of composite leaf spring, since the composite materials has high strength to weight ratio, good corrosion resistance. The material selected was glass fiber reinforced polymer (E-glass/epoxy) is used against conventional steel. The design parameters were selected and analyzed with the objective of minimizing weight of the composite leaf spring as compared to the steel leaf spring.