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Spring Design

Mechanical springs come in various forms including helical, leaf, and spiral springs. Helical springs can be compressive, tensile, or torsional. Springs are used to absorb and return energy, provide flexibility and exert forces. Key considerations in spring design include the space available, required forces and deflections, reliability, and cost. Spring materials include various steel alloys and properties depend on the wire diameter. Fatigue life of springs under cyclic loading is influenced by mean and alternating stresses in the wire. Design includes selecting a material and computing stresses with an appropriate factor of safety.

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Faisal Saad
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12 views

Spring Design

Mechanical springs come in various forms including helical, leaf, and spiral springs. Helical springs can be compressive, tensile, or torsional. Springs are used to absorb and return energy, provide flexibility and exert forces. Key considerations in spring design include the space available, required forces and deflections, reliability, and cost. Spring materials include various steel alloys and properties depend on the wire diameter. Fatigue life of springs under cyclic loading is influenced by mean and alternating stresses in the wire. Design includes selecting a material and computing stresses with an appropriate factor of safety.

Uploaded by

Faisal Saad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Spring Design

Introduction
• Mechanical springs are machine elements used frequently in many
applications for the following purposes:-

• 1- to absorb energy and return it back as in the damping systems


• 2- to exert forces and provide flexibility
In general, springs can be classified as:-
1-Wire springs, which may be helical or spiral.
Helical springs can also be divided into:-
• Compressive,
• Tensile
• Torsional springs

• 2-Flat springs (leaf springs)

The attached figure 12.1 shows some forms of mechanical springs


Helical Compressive Spring
Helical Tensile Spring
Helical Torsional Spring
Leaf Spring
Spiral Spring
Design of Helical Compression Springs
Due to the axial load acting on the helical Spring as shown in the figure,
the stresses induced in the wire will be a torsional shear stress.
Deflection in helical compression springs
Due to the axial load acting on the helical spring, the spring will
undergoes an axial elongation (δ).
Spring Lengths
The length of helical springs changes according to the applied axial
force from the free length to the solid length.
The free length is the spring length when there is no load acting on it.
The solid length is the spring length when all the spring coils are getting
tangent each to other.
Spring Solid length (Ls)
Ls= nt d
Where:-
nt = total number of coils
= n + 1/2 Plain ends
=n+1 Ground ends
=n+2 Square and ground ends
Spring free length (Lf)
Lf = Ls + dmax
Where;-
dmax = Fmax./ K

Such that
Lf < 4Dm to avoid buckling of the spring
Energy stored in helical springs (U)

1 τ 2
U
2 G
Where;-
U = elastic energy absorbed by the spring coils.
Design of Extension Springs
The stresses induced in the wire of the tensile helical spring are the
same as the compressive helical springs.
The difference between the tensile and compressive helical springs is in
the end connection and consideration of buckling effects.
Considerations for Design of Helical Springs
1- Space into which the spring must be fit and operate
2- Values of working forces and deflections
3- Accuracy and reliability needed
4- Deflection required
5- Cost and quantities needed
Spring Materials
Springs are manufactured either by hot or cold-worked processes
depending; on the size of the spring wire and coil diameter, spring
index, and material properties required. In general, pre-hardened wire
should not be used if the spring index less than 4. Winding of the spring
induces residual stresses through bending in the normal direction to
the torsional stresses in the coil spring. A great variety spring materials
is available to the designer, including plain carbon steels, alloy steels,
and corrosion-resistance steels as well as nonferrous materials such as
phosphor bronze, spring brass, beryllium copper, and various nickel
alloys.
Spring materials may be compared by an examination of their tensile
strengths, where these strengths vary tremendously with the spring
wire diameter. There is a relation relates the spring strength with the
wire diameter as follows:-

A
S ut  m
d
Where:-
Sut = ultimate strength of spring wire material
A, m are constants

The following table provides some types of spring steels. Refer to that
table to get the constants A, m of most famous spring materials and
hence the ultimate strength.
Helical Springs under Fatigue Loading
In this case, compute the
maximum and minimum shear
stresses and then compute the
mean and alternating stresses
resulted in the spring wire as
follows:
Factor of Safety

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