Dynamic Behaviour of Composite Leaf Spring

This work is carried out to describe dynamic behaviour of composite parabolic leaf spring made up of fibre reinforced polymer. As the composite material has high strength to weight ratio, good corrosion resistance, it saves weight and increase performance. The paper deals with the dynamic behaviour of GFRP leaf springs. The dimensions of an existing steel EN45 parabolic leaf spring of a TATA ACE light commercial vehicle are taken as a reference model. The problems identified as wearing and failure during cornering and braking in heavy load condition. GFRP/EPOXY was used as fibre and resin material, POLYURETHANE for bushing material.  The manufacturing was done by hand lay-up and mechanical property was tested and compared with existing material. This model will provide a much improvised ride to the vehicle by the reduction on interleaf friction. The CAD modelling of parabolic leaf spring has been done in SOLIDWORKS and for analysis the model is imported in ANSYS workbench. The finite element analysis of the composite component has been carried out by initially discrediting the model into a finite number of elements and nodes and then applying the necessary boundary condition