Virtual Validation of a Light Duty Leaf Spring Using Road Load Data

It is widely common for commercial vehicles to use Hotchkiss suspension with leaf springs attached to the solid axles. This configuration is cost effective and robust enough for the required application. The leaf springs evolved in the past decades in terms of new materials and construction, and the validation methods also changes. Since the application can be aggressive in some markets, physical tests are done to validate their durability and performance. Looking for a way to reduce development time and costs, high confidence level virtual validations are targeted by the whole industry. Using FEA fed by road load data as inputs for the loads applied to the leaf springs is an evolving methodology that can be considered as a high confidence level validation method, achieving very representative results, allowing engineering team to dismiss physical tests and release the item for production. The stages of spring development will be described in this paper, focusing on the virtual simulations and comparison to real data.