Design of Light-Weight Leaf Springs For Light-Duty Pickup Trucks

Yeo, Kee Gim (2020) Design of Light-Weight Leaf Springs For Light-Duty Pickup Trucks. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

The automobile industry has shown keen interest for the replacement of steel leaf spring with various types of composite materials, since they have high strength to weight ratio, good corrosion resistance and other properties. Previous researches have been done on the composite material for leaf spring, with mostly selected E-Glass as the new material. However, this material still lacks some of the desirable properties for example wear resistance and durability. So, this research will focus on the feasibility of using carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) to be the alternative material for conventional steel. A modification and improvement of was done in this dissertation for the design of a multi-leaf spring. The improvement was to reduce the weight of the leaf springs in a pickup truck in order to improve the handling of the vehicle and retain the stiffness of conventional leaf springs while maintaining its mechanical properties. In order to fulfil the conditions, an improved leaf spring was designed and analyzed by using appropriate software such as SolidWorks and ANSYS FEA, along with some manual calculations to justify. Important design criteria like material selection and dimensions are crucial to the conceptual design. After performing the analysis using ANSYS, the end results for the original and modified leaf springs were recorded and tabulated for discussion. In the end, it was found that the modified leaf spring has achieved almost the same spring stiffness as the original model. However, the maximum stress has been reduced by 51.76% while reducing 76.37% of the original mass. The modified leaf spring was proven to last longer than the original leaf spring and reduced the overall weight of the light-duty pickup truck’s unsprung mass.