Modeling and Finite Element Analysis of Leaf Spring Using Pro-Engineer and ANSYS Softwares

Leaf spring is an important mechanism of suspension system in vehicles that is still widely used. In automotive industry, the motivation is to increase the capability to produce vehicles of inordinate quality at best prices. For saving the natural resources, reducing the weight of vehicle is constantly the priority of car manufacturing. While decreasing the weight of an automobile, engineering designers should consider the strength of materials and the size of components. This deigned leaf spring is built up of several plates with steel material, but the steel leaf spring has an excessive weight .The weight of leaf spring may perhaps be reduced by using strength materials, and reducing the thickness of leafs. The purpose of this paper is to study the deformations and stresses of the current design of leaf spring under static and dynamic loading conditions. The system of this leaf spring is designed to minimize the vibration forces that a vehicle confronts when moving on a surface. This leaf spring has been sketched via ProEngineer software, and analyzed through ANSYS. As a result of the conducted stress study, the deformations due to the static and dynamic loading are determined along the leaf spring. The main point of the analysis study is to improve the quality of this design for a leaf spring with a longer life, and achieve a big reduction in vibration forces; for the cost reduction, modification is carried out by varying the thickness of spring leaves; and an optimization study is accompanied to satisfy the allowable values of deformation and the factor of safety by changing the size of meshing elements. Altogether analytically calculated values of deformations and stresses are someway comparable to the values obtained from ANSYS.