Vibration Analysis of Composite Leaf Spring for a Light Commercial Vehicle (TATA ACE)

Vibration analysis plays a very important role in the design of composite leaf spring, since the failure due to vibration is more prominent rather than material failure. In this research work an attempt has been made to predict the vibration behavior of leaf spring under dynamic forces and to check the suitability of composite materials like EGlass/ Epoxy, Graphite/Epoxy, Boron/Aluminum, Carbon/Epoxy and Kevlar/Epoxy for light commercial vehicle leaf spring. First the modal analysis is performed to determine the eigen values (natural frequencies) and mode shapes (eigen vectors), Harmonic analysis is carried out to determine the amplitude of response and random vibration analysis is carried out for smooth and rough road excitations using FE solver ANSYS V10. Obtained results show that Boron/Aluminum is best suitable composite material for leaf spring from vibration point of view.