SPRING MATERIALS AND THEIR PROPERTIES

We were discussing the basic concept of spring in strength of material, various definitions and terminology used in springs,  importance of spring index  and expression for maximum bending stress and deflection developed in the plate of leaf spring in our previous posts.

Today we will understand here the concept behind material selection for springs manufacturing, for various types of engineering applications, with the help of this post. 

First we will see here the important characteristics required for materials of springs.

Characteristics of material for springs

There are following important characteristics required for materials of a spring and these are as mentioned here.

1. Springs are specifically designed to be resilient and therefore spring material must have property of resiliency.

2. Creep must be small in spring materials

3. Spring materials must have good workability

4. Spring materials must have high resistance against impact loading

5. Spring materials must have high proportionality limit

6. Spring materials must have small secular changes and there must not be any variation of shape due to the remaining stress

For detailed information about the properties of common spring materials, we can find it in PDF file by clicking PDF.

Selection factors for materials of springs

There are various factors those are very important to consider during designing a good spring based on its applications such as fatigue strength, corrosion resistance, workability, yield strength, toughness, magnetic permeability, electrical conductivity, cost and availability too.

Materials selection for manufacturing of springs

Springs materials will have usually carbon contents from 0.5% to 1% C. In case of fatigue loading or high loading, alloy steels are used for manufacturing of springs.

There are following types of materials which are used for spring manufacturing and these are as mentioned here

High carbon steel

Music wire spring

Hard drawn spring

High tensile hard drawn spring

Oil tempered spring

Valve spring

Alloy steel

Chrome silicon spring

Chrome vanadium spring

Stainless steel

Stainless steel 301 springs

Stainless steel 302 springs

Stainless steel 304 springs

Stainless steel 316 springs

NiCr A286 spring

17-7 PH spring

Cobalt-Nickel

Elgiloy

MP35N

Copper base alloy

Beryllium copper spring

Brass spring

Phosphor bronze spring

Phosphor spring

Nickel Base alloy

Beryllium nickel spring

Hastelloy springs

Inconel 600 springs

Inconel X750 springs

Monel 400 springs

Monel K500 springs

Nimonic springs

Nitronic springs

Rene 41 springs

Titanium

Beta C titanium spring

Do you have suggestions? Please write in comment box.

We will now discuss another topic,difference between open coil and closed coil helical spring in the category of strength of material, in our next post.

Reference:

Strength of material, By R. K. Bansal

Image Courtesy: Google

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