Fatigue reliability design of composite leaf springs based on ply scheme optimization

The study of composite leaf springs has been popular in automotive light weighting. Particularly, the research on the fatigue reliability of composite leaf springs is crucial. This paper proposed the fatigue law inference of the parabolic composite leaf spring, which was validated by fatigue bench tests. On the bases of the ply scheme design method and the sandwich unit concept, the non-continuous layer section and the stacking order were presented. The stacking sequence was optimized using Genetic Algorithm. The production of composite leaf spring samples, on which the fatigue bench test was conducted, was based on the optimized ply scheme. Results indicate that the fatigue life of composite leaf springs can be improved by using the proposed ply scheme design method.