How would one go about finding out what the maximum stress levels of a certain type of coil spring is? I have the spring's specs readily available (type of steel, treatments, inner diameter), but what about...
1. Hard drawn vs oil tempered? I have never heard of oil tempered.
2. What is the Wahl factor?
3. What are tensile strength %'s, and how do they relate to the spring itself?
I just browsed through RCVD, and my brain is mush after about 2 hours of reading. So much info and terms and graphs in there that I am not familiar with
I did try and focus on instance centers, I got the basics I think. But measuring them is going to be a bitch it looks like.

 

bump for any sort of help pleeease

 

What are you trying to really accomplish?

There are many high quality spring manufacturers and an broad range of well designed products readily available on the market so just go out and get some good ones if you are simply trying to improve your car. If you are trying to go through some engineering exercise that really doesn't necessarily apply to the spring needs of your car, then go forth and enjoy it. Once you have reached your conclusion though, you will likely need to put down your notebook and go back to a selection of the many good available springs out there. There are any number of long treatises on theory of abut any part for the car and they can often be interesting however they can also be extreme overkill for 99.9999% of all needs and mostly are successful at turning your brain to mush (which it seems to have accomplished). Theory is great, real application can be fun too plus it lets you drive your car. You need to decide where your interests lie.

 

when it comes to springs usualy all u need to know is linear or progressive and the spring rate. unless u want to get into the manufacturing and design of springs its alot of info and good luck on all that stuff. mayb if u contact a certain spring making company theyll tell u specs and stuff but idk

 

You need to check out a Mechanical Behavior of Metals book, specifically one on manufacturing processes. Tensile strengths percentages is a ratio of an applied pressure compared to the pressure required to plastically strain the material (tensile strength). When you exceed the tensile strength, the material will not return to its unstressed shape exactly.

Springs convert kinetic energy into strain energy. The force/pressure applied by the chassis and wheel compress the spring (elastically strain the spring). When the force is removed, the spring extends and returns to its original shape. If you exceed the tensile strength of the spring, then the spring will not fully extend when you remove the force. Stick with similar dimensions/materials to other springs and you won't have a problem, but you do have to document and calculate these numbers as well as physically test your spring samples. I'm sure there are automotive spring standards that you should try and get certified for.