For more than 20 years Mubea strives to develop and produce
highly stressed suspension springs and other lightweight automotive
steel products. Despite continuous increase of load stress levels
of suspension springs it was possible to significantly reduce the
weight of suspension springs while increasing robustness.
As a successful supplier the company needs to address the
continually increasing requirements of the automotive industry for
reduced vehicle weight and CO₂ emission through strong efforts in
design and process optimization. Targeted now is a weight reduction
of another 10% while further enhancing coil spring robustness. In
order to achieve these targets Mubea has again optimized the
already established High Performance Process (HPP) and has
developed a new and innovative method of designing coil
springs.
To optimize coil spring design customized Finite Element (FE)
software was developed and successfully implemented. This allows
for appropriate distributing of working stresses along the coil
spring profile. The objective is to achieve both, maximum weight
reduction and maximum robustness, respectively. Suspension springs
featuring this optimized spring design are described as "New
Generation" coil springs. Mubea Coiling Programming System
(MCPS) in combination with the Spring Setup Indicator (SSI) - a 3D
measurement system for coil springs - allows for efficient and
highly process capable rapid prototyping and mass production setup
of "New Generation" coil springs.
Using the example of the Mubea Side Load (SL) suspension spring
for McPherson strut applications the HPP process technology and the
formerly introduced spring design concept "New
Generation" will be explained and discussed.