Durability Comparison of Fiberglass Monoleaf Hybrid and Multileaf Steel Springs

The traditional steel multileaf spring pack has been a low cost widely utilized suspension system in vehicles for decades. Applications are typically load carrying orientated, from light trucks to heavy construction equipment. Improvements to the basic design in terms of stress reduction, fatigue resistance and significant weight reduction can be achieved through the cladding of composite material to the existing steel main spring. Testing was conducted using standard test methods where available to compare the durability of a standard Multileaf Steel Pack to a Hybrid Mono Leaf Spring. The Hybrid Spring demonstrated significant improvements in the areas of ultimate deflection, fatigue and creep resistance.