Numerical Study On Gradual Rigidity Leaf Spring

Leaf spring is a important elastic component of an automobile independent suspension, and is applied to truck, passenger car and microbus commonly. The performance of leaf spring and fatigue life are the main factors that determine the design level of vehicle. These factors are important to improve the safety, comfortable character and usage life of the whole vehicle.Gradual rigidity leaf spring is one of the most widespreadly used leaf spring in minitype vehicles. Considering many factors in working condition, the gradual rigidity leaf spring is studied in this paper. The main works and contributions include:1) Considering nonlinear material, large deformation, interleaf friction and prestress in assembly simultaneously, the FEA model of the gradual rigidity leaf spring is built by using ABAQUS. Stress distribution and stiffness are obtained after calculatation. The study points out that the FEA analysis has a good agreement with experimental analysis.2) Base on mechanism of shot peening,, the process model with an initial stress field simulates the progressive deformed plastic layer by using subroutine. The results between shot peening leaf spring and common leaf spring are compared.3) Fatigue life of gradual rigidity leaf spring has been studied by software MSC.Fatigue. The comparison between special leaf spring and common leaf spring has been done. The outcome of calculation demonstrates the shot peening leaf spring improve the fatigue life greatly.