One of the most important tasks that an engineer may be called upon to perform is that of

materials selection with regard to component design. Most of the manufacturer use material
such as carbon steels, low alloy steels, stainless steels and copper based alloys to manufacture
springs. There are factors will affect material choice such as (1) meets the required stress
conditions either static or dynamic (2) must be capable to function at a certain temperature (3)
suitable for surroundings such corrosive environment.
Furthermore, in order to specify compression spring, engineer will be aware of the load
required with the operational conditions. With the data and information, engineer must select
a material from which spring can be made. Specification will depend on pitch, solid length,
number of active coils and free length. In designing compression springs, the space allotted
governs the dimensional limits with regard to allowable solid length and the outer and inner
diameter. These dimensional limits, together with the load applied and deflection requirements
as well as the maximum shear stress.
In this analysis, we select two different of materials in order to make comparison which material
selection is better to be manufacture with the operational condition we needed. We select
carbon steel and stainless steel wire material for this analysis. Load about 150N is applied to
compress the spring. From the calculation, when load is applied to carbon steel spring the
deflection () is 79.79mm, meanwhile stainless steel wire spring the deflection is 87.76mm. For
large deflections, helical compression springs are most commonly chosen and for small
deflections, spring washers are most common. Since the deflection for the materials spring is
large, it means helical compression spring can use. Besides that, deflection for carbon steel
spring is less than stainless steel wire, therefore carbon steel can be choose instead or stainless
steel wire spring. Then the spring constant (k) for the carbon steel spring is k= 1.95 and the
stainless steel wire spring constant is k= 1.71, where carbon steel material is better than
stainless steel material.
Carbon steel needed protective coatings because the environmental impact. One area where
carbon steel is still normally specified is for extremely dynamic applications where very high
cycle live are required. Stainless steel wire should be used for springs when resistance either to
corrosion or relaxation at elevated temperatures is required. Their resistance both to corrosion
and to creep is superior. Stainless steel is about 15% less stiff than carbon steel for a
given wire size.