Optimization

of a Dirt Bike Compression Spring to Maximize

Safety Factor

By: Abdullah Khan
04/28/2017

Summary

This paper optimizes the compression spring used in a dirt bike under a dynamic load to maximize the
safety factor. I chose to model the spring for a dirt bike because it undergoes many different forces applied to
it as it drives over different trains. Often times, these bikes are driven over very rocky surfaces or made to
perform in stunts which require the springs to be engineered to a very high level since they might be jumping
from great heights and distances, resulting in shock and impact loads.
The helical compression spring will be simulated in both Matlab and SolidWorks for a dynamic loading.
Diameter of the wire, Spring index, and material of spring wire will be the variables tested to see which one
yields the best results in terms of safety factor. The ideal safety factor for a compression spring that may be
subject to impact loads is set to be 2. The purpose of this paper is to get a value as close to that as possible.
Over designing the spring will also be avoided since the spring has to be packaged to add the least amount of
weight to the bike. A drawing of the SolidWorks model and the Matlab code will be attached to the appendix.

Introduction
Compression springs are used in cars and bikes to store mechanical energy from bumps on the road and
to prevent the vehicle body from taking too much stress. For dirt bikes in particular, this is important for both
the bike as well as the rider since the bike will be running over a diverse terrain with many ups and downs.

Figure 1: Dirt bike
[http://gfx.motosport.com/motoblog/2014/Clean-dirt-bike.jpg]

Mechanical System
The spring this paper focuses on is a helical compression spring. Specifically, I will focus on a spring with
a constant coil diameter, constant pitch, round-wire spring, which is also the most common type. The important
variables to consider when designing this type of spring are wire diameter (d), mean coil diameter (D), free
length (Lf), number of coils (Nt), working deflection (yworking), shut height (Ls), and clash allowance (yclash). Other
parameters that come into play include the spring index (C), deflection (y), and spring rate (k). The spring will
be tested for fatigue failure because it will undergo a lot of cycles in the automotive application. The material
selected will affect the yield strength and ultimately the safety factor, so that will be considered. A picture
showing the usual spring set up in a dirt bike is shown below as figure 2.

Figure 2: Offroad motorcycle compression spring
[http://www.risenbicycle.com/photo/pl14738087-
offroad_motorcycle_hydraulic_coil_spring_shock_with_piggyback_damper_high_low_speed_compression_270_400mm_dirtbike
.jpg ]

Functionality of part
Helical compression springs are usually used together with a damper as part of a shock absorber. The
springs compress as the bike hits a bump on the road or jumps. The purpose of the spring is to compress and
absorb energy and then push back to its original position to maintain the correct suspension for the bike.
Together with the damper, the spring minimizes the force experienced by the rider, and makes the ride a lot
more comfortable. The spring compresses straight down without any side deflection. This is very important in
a dirt bike since the force might not always be coming up at a normal angle to the spring.

Loading conditions
The forces considered for this spring will be assumed as a maximum of 200 N and a minimum of 100 N.
Since we are dealing with a helical compression spring, the forces will only act in the axial direction. This loading
will be used for various materials, with everything held constant except the coefficients and exponents used to
calculate the ultimate tensile strength.

Material Selection
The material of the spring is assumed to be chrome vanadium initially. When considering different
materials, I took into account the fact that this spring will undergo dynamic stresses and fatigue loading, so only
the materials suitable for this purpose were chosen for analysis. Preference was given to materials designed
specifically for shock and impact loads.
The three types of spring wires analyzed were Chrome-Vanadium A232, Chrome-Silicon A401, and Oil-
tempered wire A230. Chrome-Vanadium was predicted to be the best application since it is suitable for fatigue
loading and good for shock and impact loads. It is also the most popular alloy spring steel according to the
Norton textbook. The second test was using Chrome-Silicon since it is also suitable for fatigue loading and has
the second highest strength to music wire. Lastly, Oil-tempered wire was tested since it is valve-spring quality
and suitable for fatigue loading.

Stress Analysis
According to Norton, there are two components of stress in a Helical Compression Spring. A torsional
shear stress and a direct shear stress. They add up to give the maximum shear stress which occurs at the inner
fiber of the wires cross section. Since the spring is dynamically loaded, the failure will be by fatigue at stresses
far below the yield point. Therefore, the appropriate equations were used in Matlab to calculate the mean and
alternating stress component. The ideal safety factor was considered to be 2, which would confirm that the
spring was designed to a level appropriate for impact loading. Unfortunately, I was unable to model the load in
SolidWorks to produce a Finite Element Analysis for the spring I modelled. I tried to make up for this by taking
into consideration all the necessary parameter for a compression spring under dynamic loading and using
Matlab to calculate all the safety factors, including values for shut height and buckling.


Figure 3: Compression spring modeled in SolidWorks with force applied

Design Optimization
Matlab was used to calculate all the equations and the final safety factors for each material. Chrome-
Vanadium A232, Chrome-Silicon A401, and Oil-tempered wire A230 were tested with the wire diameter (d) set
to 4mm to minimize packaging size. The force applied to each material was the same: 200 N and 100 N. Some
other assumptions made for Matlab calculations were keeping the working deflection 32 mm, 15% clash
allowance, and a forcing frequency of 250 rpm.
The table below shows the final results of the Matlab calculations. Chrome-Silicon was the highest and
Oil-tempered was the lowest. In general, all three materials performed to an acceptable level for the assumed
dynamic loading and wire diameter. During the course of the optimization, the wire diameter was initially set
to be 8 mm. This yielded an unnecessarily high safety factor, so in order to optimize the design and packaging,
the wire diameter was reduced to 4 mm and the spring index was kept at 12. I think Chrome-Vanadium would
be the best material of choice for this application as it placed well between the other two materials in terms of
safety factor, and it is the most popular alloy choice according to Norton, so it would be economical as well.

Table 1: Results of Matlab code showing respective safety factors for each material

Material Force Wire Safety Factor

Diameter
Chrome-Vanadium A232 2.34
Chrome-Silicon A401 Fmax = 200 N 4 mm 2.38
Oil-tempered wire A230 Fmin = 100 N 2.31

Discussion
In SolidWorks, the spring was modelled to have a wire diameter of 8 mm since that was the design
choice I found used commonly in dirt bike compression springs. However, the Matlab code showed that for the
assumed force from 200 N to 100 N, this was not necessarily the best choice. The wire diameter could be
reduced down to 4 mm while maintaining the appropriate safety factor for this application. Of course,
depending on the weight of the rider and the use of the bike, this data may change and so the spring would
have to be tuned and modified accordingly. Changing the material changed the safety factor slightly, but in
general all three materials performed to a satisfactory level, with the safety factor staying above 2.

Conclusion
This paper optimized a helical compression spring using Matlab. The spring was initially modelled in
Solidworks to help better visualize the part, and then the safety factor was calculated using code generated in
Matlab. The final results showed that Chrome-Vanadium would be the best material of choice as it will not fail
under these loading conditions. For actual use, the force absorbed by the spring needs to be measured, as for
the purpose of this analysis, it was just assumed to be a maximum of 200 N and a minimum of 100 N. This will
in turn influence whether the material, wire diameter, and spring index needs to be changed to maintain the
same safety factor.

Appendix

Note: The radius for the wire is given in inches













% Chrome-Silicon

clc,clear

d = 0.004 %wire diameter

C = 12 %spring index
D = d*C %mean coil diameter
Ks = 1 + 0.5/C %Direct shear factor
y_working = 0.032 %working deflection

tau_i = (Ks*8*100*D)/((pi)*(0.009)^3) %stress at low force

tau_m = (Ks*8*150*D)/((pi)*(0.009)^3) %mean stress

Kw = (4*C-1)/(4*C -4) + 0.615/C %Wahl factor

tau_a = (Kw*8*50*D)/((pi)*(d)^3) %alternating shear stress

Sut = (2059.2*10^6)*(d)^-0.0934
Sus = 0.67*Sut
Sys = 0.60*Sut
Sew = 465*10^6

Ses = (0.5*Sew*Sus)/(Sus-0.5*Sew)
Nfs = (Ses*(Sus-tau_i))/(Ses*(tau_m-tau_i)+Sus*tau_a)

k = (200-100)/0.032 %spring rate

Na = ((d^4)*(80.8*10^9))/(8*(D^3)*k) %number of active coils
Na = 4.25
k = ((d^4)*(80.8*10^9))/(8*(D^3)*Na)

Nt = Na+2 %total number of coils

Ls = d*Nt %shut height

y_initial = 100/k %initial deflection

y_clash = 0.15*y_working %clash allowance

Lf = Ls + y_clash+0.032+y_initial %free length

y_shut = Lf-Ls %deflection to the shut height

Fshut = k*y_shut %force at shut height

tau_shut = (Ks*8*Fshut*D)/(pi*(d^3)) %shut height stress

Ns_shut = Sys/tau_shut %shut height safety factor

buckling_ratio1 = Lf/D
buckling_ratio2 = (y_initial+y_working)/Lf

Wa = ((pi^2)*(d^2)*(D)*(Na)*(7750))/4 %weight of spring's active coils

fn = (0.5)*((k*9.81)/Wa)^0.5 %natural frequency

fn = 9798 % in cycles per minute

frequency_ratio = fn/250




% Chrome-Vanadium
clc,clear

d = 0.004 %wire diameter

C = 12 %spring index
D = d*C %mean coil diameter
Ks = 1 + 0.5/C %Direct shear factor
y_working = 0.032 %working deflection

tau_i = (Ks*8*100*D)/((pi)*(0.009)^3) %stress at low force

tau_m = (Ks*8*150*D)/((pi)*(0.009)^3) %mean stress

Kw = (4*C-1)/(4*C -4) + 0.615/C %Wahl factor

tau_a = (Kw*8*50*D)/((pi)*(d)^3) %alternating shear stress

Sut = (1909.9*10^6)*(d)^-0.1453
Sus = 0.67*Sut
Sys = 0.60*Sut
Sew = 465*10^6

Ses = (0.5*Sew*Sus)/(Sus-0.5*Sew)
Nfs = (Ses*(Sus-tau_i))/(Ses*(tau_m-tau_i)+Sus*tau_a)

k = (200-100)/0.032 %spring rate

Na = ((d^4)*(80.8*10^9))/(8*(D^3)*k) %number of active coils
Na = 4.25
k = ((d^4)*(80.8*10^9))/(8*(D^3)*Na)

Nt = Na+2 %total number of coils

Ls = d*Nt %shut height

y_initial = 100/k %initial deflection

y_clash = 0.15*y_working %clash allowance

Lf = Ls + y_clash+0.032+y_initial %free length

y_shut = Lf-Ls %deflection to the shut height

Fshut = k*y_shut %force at shut height

tau_shut = (Ks*8*Fshut*D)/(pi*(d^3)) %shut height stress

Ns_shut = Sys/tau_shut %shut height safety factor

buckling_ratio1 = Lf/D
buckling_ratio2 = (y_initial+y_working)/Lf

Wa = ((pi^2)*(d^2)*(D)*(Na)*(7750))/4 %weight of spring's active coils

fn = (0.5)*((k*9.81)/Wa)^0.5 %natural frequency

fn = 9798 % in cycles per minute

frequency_ratio = fn/250


% oil tempered

clc,clear

d = 0.004 %wire diameter

C = 12 %spring index
D = d*C %mean coil diameter
Ks = 1 + 0.5/C %Direct shear factor
y_working = 0.032 %working deflection

tau_i = (Ks*8*100*D)/((pi)*(0.009)^3) %stress at low force

tau_m = (Ks*8*150*D)/((pi)*(0.009)^3) %mean stress

Kw = (4*C-1)/(4*C -4) + 0.615/C %Wahl factor

tau_a = (Kw*8*50*D)/((pi)*(d)^3) %alternating shear stress

Sut = (1831.2*10^6)*(d)^-0.1833
Sus = 0.67*Sut
Sys = 0.60*Sut
Sew = 465*10^6

Ses = (0.5*Sew*Sus)/(Sus-0.5*Sew)
Nfs = (Ses*(Sus-tau_i))/(Ses*(tau_m-tau_i)+Sus*tau_a)

k = (200-100)/0.032 %spring rate

Na = ((d^4)*(80.8*10^9))/(8*(D^3)*k) %number of active coils
Na = 4.25
k = ((d^4)*(80.8*10^9))/(8*(D^3)*Na)

Nt = Na+2 %total number of coils

Ls = d*Nt %shut height

y_initial = 100/k %initial deflection

y_clash = 0.15*y_working %clash allowance

Lf = Ls + y_clash+0.032+y_initial %free length

y_shut = Lf-Ls %deflection to the shut height

Fshut = k*y_shut %force at shut height

tau_shut = (Ks*8*Fshut*D)/(pi*(d^3)) %shut height stress

Ns_shut = Sys/tau_shut %shut height safety factor

buckling_ratio1 = Lf/D
buckling_ratio2 = (y_initial+y_working)/Lf

Wa = ((pi^2)*(d^2)*(D)*(Na)*(7750))/4 %weight of spring's active coils

fn = (0.5)*((k*9.81)/Wa)^0.5 %natural frequency

fn = 9798 % in cycles per minute

frequency_ratio = fn/250





References

Norton, Robert L. Machine Design An Integrated Approach. 5th ed. NJ: Pearson Education, 2014. Print