To meet the needs of modern vehicles, leaf spring design innovation can start from the following aspects:
Lightweight Design:
Material Selection: Use high-strength steel, aluminum alloy, and other lightweight materials to replace traditional steel. For example, some high-end models utilize high-strength aluminum alloy leaf springs, significantly reducing weight and improving fuel economy while ensuring performance.
Structural Optimization: Design a more compact and simple leaf spring structure, such as a less-leaf spring structure. Less-leaf springs are composed of a single or 2-3 spring leaves with variable thickness sections. Compared with multi-leaf springs, they reduce the number of spring leaves and their own weight. At the same time, they can also reduce friction between leaves, improve service life, and enhance vehicle driving smoothness. Statistics show that when the service life of both springs is equal, the less-leaf variable-section leaf spring can reduce mass by 40%-50%.
Improve Comfort:
Optimize Stiffness Characteristics: Variable stiffness can be achieved by changing the geometry, size, and arrangement of the leaf springs. For instance, using a spring leaf with gradient thickness allows for different stiffness under varying loads. When the load is small, the stiffness is low, better filtering small bumps and improving ride comfort; with larger loads, stiffness increases to ensure load-bearing capacity and handling stability.
Increase Damping Design: Add damping materials or devices, such as rubber pads and dampers, to the leaf spring structure to effectively absorb and attenuate vibration energy, reducing vibration and noise during vehicle operation, thereby further enhancing comfort.
Enhance Durability:
Material Improvement: Select materials with better fatigue resistance or perform special heat treatment, surface treatment, and other processes on existing materials to enhance strength, toughness, and fatigue life. For example, advanced shot peening technology can create a compressive stress layer on the surface of the leaf spring, significantly improving its fatigue strength and extending its service life.
Structural Design Optimization: Rationally design the shape and size of the leaf spring to avoid stress concentration areas. Using an arc-shaped or curved spring leaf design helps distribute stress more evenly, reducing the risk of fatigue damage from excessive local stress.
Adapt to Diverse Needs:
Customized Design: Design leaf springs with specific performance parameters and structural characteristics for different types of vehicles (such as passenger cars, commercial vehicles, off-road vehicles, etc.) and various usage scenarios (urban roads, highways, off-road conditions, etc.) to meet diverse needs. For example, leaf springs for off-road vehicles must have greater deformation capacity and stronger load-bearing capacity to adapt to complex terrains.
Coordinated Design with Other Suspension Systems: Consider the coordinated function of leaf springs and other suspension components (such as shock absorbers, stabilizer bars, etc.), optimizing their interaction to enhance the performance of the entire suspension system and improve overall vehicle performance. In high-performance models, achieving a balance between handling performance and comfort is done by precisely adjusting the parameters of both leaf springs and shock absorbers.
