DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF GLASS FIBER REINFORCED POLYMER (GFRP) LEAF

Abstract

Weight reduction is 
now the main issue in automobile 
industries. Weight reduction can be 
achieved primarily by the introduction 
of better material, design optimization 
and better manufacturing processes. The 
achievement of weight reduction with 
adequate improvement of mechanical 
properties has made composite a very 
good 
replacement 
material 
for 
conventional steel. Selection of material 
is based on cost and strength of material. 
The composite materials have more 
elastic strain energy storage capacity and 
high strength to weight ratio as 
compared with those of steel, so multi- 
leaf steel springs are being replaced by 
mono-leaf composite springs. The paper 
gives the brief look on the suitability of 
composite leaf spring on vehicles and 
their advantages. The objective of the 
present work is design, analysis and 
fabrication of mono composite leaf 
spring. The design constraints are stress 
and deflections. The material selected is 
glass fibre reinforced plastic (GFRP) 
and the epoxy resin can be used which is 
more economical to reduce total cost of 
composite leaf spring with similar 
mechanical and geometrical properties 
to the multileaf spring. The composite 
leaf spring is fabricated by hand layup 
technique and tested. The testing was 
performed experimentally with the help 
of UTM and by (FEA) using ANSYS 
software 
showing 
stresses 
and 
deflections were verified with analytical 
and experimental results. Compared to 
the steel spring, the composite spring 
has stresses that are much lower, the 
spring weight is nearly 74% lower.