International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology (IJMET)

Volume 8, Issue 6, June 2017, pp. 494–500, Article ID: IJMET_08_06_051

Available online at http://iaeme.com/Home/issue/IJMET?Volume=8&Issue=6
ISSN Print: 0976-6340 and ISSN Online: 0976-6359

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DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE LEAF

SPRING
D V Ramanareddy
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Vardhaman College of Engineering, Shamshabad, Hyderabad, India

B. Subbaratnam
Department Mechanical Engineering, Vardhaman College of Engineering,
Shamshabad, Hyderabad, India

E. Manoj Kumar
Department Mechanical Engineering,
Vardhaman College of Engineering, Shamshabad, Hyderabad, India

Perala kalyan Praneeth

Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Vardhaman College of Engineering, Shamshabad, Hyderabad, India

ABSTRACT
Composite materials are extensively used in many engineering applications due to
high strength and stiffness to weight ratio. The Automobile Industry has great interest
for replacement of steel leaf spring with that of composite leaf spring, the composite
materials has high strength to weight ratio, good corrosion resistance. In this paper,
the design and analysis a composite leaf spring and compared with a standard steel
leaf spring. The materials selected are Epoxy glass, Epoxy carbon, Aluminum Alloy,
Titanium Alloy is used against conventional steel leaf spring. The design parameters
are selected and analyzed with the objective of comparing Stress, Deformation,
Elastic Strain and Weight of the composite leaf spring as compared to conventional
steel leaf spring. The leaf spring was modeled in CATIA and the analysis was done in
ANSYS software.
Key words: Steel Leaf Spring, Composite, Epoxy, Automobile, Composite Leaf
Spring.
Cite this Article: D V Ramanareddy, B.Subbaratnam, E. Manoj Kumar and Perala
Kalyan Praneeth, Design and Analysis of Composite Leaf Spring, International
Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, 8(6), 2017, pp. 494–500.
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 D V Ramanareddy, B.Subbaratnam, E. Manoj Kumar and Perala Kalyan Praneeth

1. INTRODUCTION
A leaf spring is a simple type of suspension commonly used in vehicles. The leaf spring can
be arranged in two different ways based on the vehicles. First type is simple supported type of
leaf spring in which both the ends of the leaf spring are fixed to the chassis of the vehicle and
the second one is cantilever type of leaf spring in which one end is fixed to the chassis of the
vehicle and other end is left free for displacement. The Leaf spring is generally made of Steel.
Leaf springs were very common on automobiles, right up to the 1970s in Europe and
Japan and late 70's in United States of America when the move to front wheel drive, and more
sophisticated suspension designs in automobile manufacturers use coil springs instead. Today
leaf springs are still used in heavy commercial vehicles such as vans and trucks, SUVs, and
railway carriages. For heavy vehicles, they have the advantage of spreading the load more
widely over the vehicle's chassis, whereas coil springs transfer it to a single point. Unlike coil
springs, leaf springs also locate the rear axle, eliminating the need for trailing arms and a Pan
hard rod, thereby saving cost and weight in a simple live axle rear suspension.
Increasing competition and in automobile sector tends to modify the existing products or
replacing old products by new and advanced material products. The automobile
manufacturers have been attempting to reduce the weight of the vehicles in recent years to
meet the needs of the natural resource conservation and economy. The design and analysis of
different composite materials of leaf springs for light weight vehicles has studied by
Syambabu Nutalapati [1], using the Pro/E and ANSYS. The importance of replacing the
composite materials in leaf springs in place of steel leaf spring studied in Ref.[2-8]. The main
contribution proposed work in this paper is to study the stress, deformation and weight of the
different composite material leaf springs.

2. DESIGN OF LEAF SPRING

The design of the leaf spring is done in CATIA V5 R20. All the leaves, clamps and bolt are
designed separately in the part drawing and are assembled in the assembly drawing section in
CATIA. The leaves are assembled by giving surface contact between the bottom surface of
one leaf to the top surface of the other leaf. In this way all the 10 leaves are assembled in the
CATIA, after that the clamps and bolts are assembled in the leaf spring.

A. Design specifications of leaf spring

1 TOTAL LENGTH OF THE SPRING(EYE TO EYE) 1120 MM

2 FREE CAMBER 180 MM

3 NO OF FULL LENGTH LEAVES 2

4 NO OF GRADUATED LEAVES 8

5 THICKNESS OF THE LEAF 6 MM

6 WIDTH OF THE LEAF 50 MM

7 YOUNG’S MODULUS OF THE STEEL 210 GPA

8 POISSON RATIO 0.3

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 Design and Analysis of Composite Leaf Spring

B. CATIA drawing of leaf spring

Figure 1 shows the final assembled diagram of the leaf spring designed in CATIA.

Figure 1 assembled diagram of Leaf spring in CATIA

3. Materials used for analysis

In Analysis of Leaf spring, the authors are considered different materials to compare the
conventional steel leaf spring. The selected materials are Epoxy glass, Epoxy carbon,
Aluminum Alloy, and Titanium Alloy. The following are the material properties of selected
materials are compared with the steel properties.

3.1 Steel
The material used for leaf springs is usually a plain carbon steel having 0.90 to 1.0% carbon.
The leaves are heat treated after the forming process. The heat treatment of spring steel
products has greater strength and therefore greater load capacity, greater range of deflection
and better fatigue properties.

3.2 E-Glass/Epoxy
The main advantage of Glass fiber over others is its low cost. It has high strength, high
chemical resistance and good insulating properties.

3.3 Epoxy Carbon

The advantages of Epoxy carbon include high specific strength and modulus, low coefficient
of thermal expansion and high fatigue strength

3.4. Aluminum Alloy

Aluminum is a very desirable metal because it is more malleable and elastic, corrosion
resistant and less denser.

3.5 Titanium Alloy

Titanium’s material is a combination of high strength, stiffness, toughness, low density and
good corrosion resistance provided by various titanium alloys. It is the most useful strongest
metal available.

4. ANALYSIS PROCEDURE OF LEAF SPRING

4.1. Geometry
First generate the geometric model of the leaf spring from CATIA into Ansys software.

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 D V Ramanareddy, B.Subbaratnam, E. Manoj Kumar and Perala Kalyan Praneeth

4.2. Define Materials

Define a library of materials for Analysis. In this Analysis of leaf spring , selected materials
are steel, Epoxy glass, Epoxy carbon, Aluminum Alloy, Titanium Alloy. These materials can
be selected from the engineering data available in Ansys software.

4.3. Generate Mesh

Now generate the mesh. This divides the drawing into finite number of pieces. It will show
the number of nodes and elements present in the drawing after meshing is completed.

4.4. Apply Boundary conditions

Simply supported boundary conditions are considered for the leaf spring. In this case both the
ends of the leaf spring are given fixed support and the load on the leaf spring is applied at the
bottom leaf in upwards direction.

4.5. Obtain solution and generate results

Now obtain the solution for the stress, deformation and elastic strain and generate the results.

5. ANALYSIS OF LEAF SPRING

Now, let us check the results obtained in Ansys for stress, deformation, elastic strain and
weight for the specified materials.

Figure 2 Steel material

Figure.3 E-Glass/Epoxy

Figure 4 Epoxy Carbon

Figure 5 Aluminum Alloy

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 Design and Analysis of Composite Leaf Spring

Figure 6 Titanium Alloy

6. COMPARISON OF THEORETICAL AND ANALYSIS RESULT

Comparison of theoretical stress, deformation and weight with that of the results obtained
from the Ansys software

Table 1 Comparison of Stress

S. No Material Theoretical Ansys

(N/mm2) (N/mm2)

1 Steel 60 59.38

2 E-Glass/Epoxy 60 69.13

3 Epoxy Carbon 60 63.16

4 Aluminum Alloy 60 59.64

5 Titanium Alloy 60 59.93

Table 1 shows the comparison of stress in theoretical and computational for the steel and
other composite materials, the theoretical stress is 60 N/mm2, where as the stress values
obtained using Ansys for different materials are nearly to 60 N/mm2. Now the theoretical
values are very close to the computational using ANSYS.

Table 2 Comparison of Deformation at 3200N

S. No Material Theoretical (mm) Ansys (mm)

1 Steel 0.141 0.135

2 E-Glass/Epoxy 3.54 3.38

3 Epoxy Carbon 2.83 3.11

4 Aluminum Alloy 0.39 0.375

5 Titanium Alloy 0.295 0.277

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 D V Ramanareddy, B.Subbaratnam, E. Manoj Kumar and Perala Kalyan Praneeth

Table 2 shows the comparison of the theoretical and Ansys results of deformation for
various materials. The Ansys values are close to the theoretical values.

Table 3 Comparison of Weight

S. No Material Theoretical Ansys

1 Steel 16.67 18.7

2 E-Glass/Epoxy 4.27 3.62

3 Epoxy Carbon 3.18 3.55

4 Aluminum Alloy 5.91 6.61

5 Titanium Alloy 9.87 11

Table 3 shows the comparison of the theoretical and Ansys results of weight of the leaf
spring for different materials. The ANSYS values are close to that of the theoretical leaf
spring weight.

7. CONCLUSIONS
The design and static Analysis of steel leaf spring and Composite leaf spring has been carried
out in this present work. Comparison has been made between composite and steel leaf springs
under the same load conditions. The Stress, displacement and weight have been calculated
analytically and compared with FEA results. The results obtained from the Ansys and
theoretical values, it has been concluded that all the composite leaf springs have better
displacement, stresses and weight compared to the conventional steel leaf springs.

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 Design and Analysis of Composite Leaf Spring

REFERENCES
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for Light Vehicles” International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology
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