This project reviews some general research works carried out by different researchers for design, analysis and optimization of design, material, performance, reliability and cost of leaf spring. Leaf spring is the potential component for weight reduction in order to achieve high fuel efficiency and batter ride characteristics. Favorable mechanical properties of composite materials such as light weight, high strength and good corrosion resistance encourage researchers to replace conventional steel leaf spring with composite leaf spring. In present work conventional steel leaf spring materials and different alternative materials proposed by many researchers are listed and their effects on performance, reliability are studied. Major areas of research work for optimization of leaf spring are studied. Different CAE tools available for modeling and analysis of leaf spring are studied. Comparative stress, deflection and fatigue analysis performed on different steel and composite leaf spring models by many researchers using CAE tools are studied and results are compared with experimental results. Design software Creo 2.0 is used for 3D modeling of leaf spring and analysis software ANSYS 14.0 is used for FEM analysis of leaf spring as FEM is an accurate, efficient and less time consuming method of analysis.