Author : Mohammed Hussien Rady

Today most of the industries are focusing on reducing the weight of the product while improving or keeping the same strength by using alternative design techniques to fulfill many advantageous aspects from the products. Automobile sector is one of the largest sectors in the globe and always trying to reduce the weight of the vehicles. Composite materials are the one of the families which is attracting as solutions to this issue. Among the many components of a vehicle leaf spring is selected for this research work. Leaf springs are crucial suspension elements in automobile, necessary to minimize the vertical vibrations, impacts and bumps due to road irregularities. The main objective of this work is the computational analysis of a composite multi leaf spring for a light motor vehicle and its comparison with conventional steel spring. A new spring is designed and analyzed in this work showed 43.99 % weight reduction as compared to conventional spring in addition to reduction in stresses.

Keywords: Composite material, glass fiber, leaf spring

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.6, No.6 (Dec-2016)