Abstract
Elliptic rings fabricated with carbon-fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (CFRP) have been studied to be available for a new spring element of the car suspension system. Recently, Akasaka et al. evaluated five kinds of spring constant of elliptic ring under different loadings, by using the energy method. No theoretical analysis, however, has been conducted yet on large deformation behavior of the CFRP elliptic ring. In this paper, we studied the large deformation characteristics and the stress distribution of the ring. By applying the collocation method, we obtained approximately deflected curves of the ring under the axial compressive load in the vertical direction. Experimenth were conducted for two elliptic rings with the same dimension. Comparison between the experimental and the predicted results of the deformed configuration and the stress distribution for each specimen showed a good correspondence.
