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Securing the desired strength and durability characteristics of suspension components is one of the most important topics in the development of commercial vehicles because these components undergo multiaxial variable amplitude loading. Leaf springs are essential for the suspension systems of trucks and they are considered as security relevant components in the product development phase. In order to guide the engineers in the design and testing department, a simulation method is developed as explained by Bakir et al. in a recently published SAE paper [1]. The main aim of the present study is to illustrate the validation of this simulation method for the durability of leaf springs based on the results from testing and measurements. In order to verify this CAE Method, the calculated stresses on the leaf springs are compared with the results of strain gage measurements and the fatigue failures of leaf springs are correlated with the calculated damage values.

In today's world, there are a prominent number of weight and cost reduction projects within the vehicle engineering development activities. Regarding this phenomenon, a complete optimization study is applied to a leaf spring assembly, which has 4 leaves and which is used in heavy duty trucks, by reducing the number of leaves down to 3 together with weight and cost reductions. At the first step of the project, the stiffness of the leaf spring is calculated with in-house software based on mathematical calculations using the thickness profile of the leaves. Then the results of these calculations are compared with non-linear elastic leaf spring calculations which are conducted with FEA. This elastic leaf spring finite element model is transferred into Multi-Body-Simulation (MBS) model in order to determine the forces acting on the leaf spring.