Author : R M Patil, S M Hatrote, A K Pharale, V S Patil, G V Chiniwalar and A S Reddy

Present day we can find many metallic leaf springs commonly used for the suspension of light weight to heavy weight vehicles. It is found that the conventional metallic leaf springs add significant static weight to the vehicles and reduces their fuel efficiency. As composites are the advanced materials having higher strength to weight ratio and corrosion resistance feature they are found to be the potential materials for replacing these conventional metallic leaf springs without giving up the strength and by reducing the structural weight substantially. Therefore in this paper composite leaf spring is fabricated using hand lay-up vacuum bagging technique for composites manufacturing to replace metallic leaf spring of light passenger vehicle. Experimental tests are performed to compare the load carrying capacity and stiffness of composite leaf spring with metallic one and also the fabricated composite leaf spring is fitted to the vehicle and its performance under actual working conditions are studied.

Keywords: Composite materials, Leaf spring, Light passenger vehicle, Vacuum bagging technique.