Comparison Of Performance Of Glass Fibre Reinforced Plastic Leaf Spring With Steel Leaf Spring

Increasing competition and innovation in automobile sector tends to modify the existing products by new and advanced material products. A suspension system of vehicle is also an area where these innovations are carried out regularly.Leaf springs are one of the oldest suspension components that are being still used widely inautomobiles. Weight reduction is also given due importance by automobile manufacturers. The automobile industry has shown increased interest in the use of composite leaf springin the place of conventional steel leaf spring due to its high strength to weight ratio. The introduction of composite materials has made it possible to reduce the weight of the leaf spring without any reduction in load carrying capacity and stiffness. Therefore the objective of this paper is to present a general study on the performance comparison of composite (Glass Fibre Reinforced plastic GFRP) leaf spring and conventional leaf spring. Leaf spring is modelled in Unigraphics NX4 software and it is imported in ANSYS 11.0. The conventional steel leaf spring and the composite leaf spring were analysed under similar conditions using ANSYS software and the results are presented.