On October 10, 2022, Hay Think team visited the officially put into production composite leaf spring project at SDHH Automotive Parts Technology Corporation. Its production not only fills the gap in China, but also marks the mass production of China's first composite leaf spring for heavy trucks.
In the production workshop, workers are rushing to make orders for China's largest heavy truck manufacturer, Sinotruk, to deliver 1000 composite leaf springs required by Sinotruk before the end of the year.
As another important way to lighten automobile parts, composite leaf spring technology is a project that Chinese enterprises are working hard to tackle.
Even in the global scope, few enterprises can master the mature composite leaf spring technology.
In 2018, the company invested more than 50 million yuan to acquire an enterprise focusing on this field in Germany, thus mastering relevant technologies.
"A composite leaf spring can replace a group of metal leaf springs, which has a very obvious weight reduction effect on the car." The person in charge said that the weight of the composite leaf spring is 60% – 75% lower than that of the leaf spring, the fatigue life under vertical load is 5 times that of steel, which can effectively improve the smoothness of the product by about 30%, and the durability is 2~5 times that of steel multi leaf leaf leaf leaf leaf spring.
In addition, composite leaf springs have obvious advantages in use safety – with the approaching of service life, metal leaf springs may suddenly break, while composite leaf springs will only fall off layer by layer, thus playing the role of "failure protection".
After the composite leaf spring replaces the metal leaf spring, each vehicle (heavy truck) can reduce the weight by about 280 kg, and the annual fuel consumption can be reduced by about 2240 liters.
Before the official production of composite leaf spring, the company's products have been sent to China National Heavy Duty Truck, Shaanxi Heavy Duty Truck, Geely and other large automobile factories for many times. PPAP documents have been approved by these OEM manufacturers.