Automotive suspension design is an aspect of automotive engineering, concerned with designing the suspension for cars and trucks.
The process entails
- Selecting appropriate vehicle level targets
- Selecting a system architecture
- Choosing the location of the 'hard points', or theoretical centres of each ball joint or bushing
- Selecting the rates of the bushings
- Analysing the loads in the suspension
- Designing the spring rates
- Designing shock absorber characteristics
- Designing the structure of each component so that it is strong, stiff, light, and cheap
- Analysing the vehicle dynamics of the resulting design
Since the 1990s the use of multibody simulation and finite element software has made this series of tasks more straightforward.
Read more about Automotive Suspension Design: Vehicle Level Targets, System Architecture, Hardpoints, Compliance Analysis, Loads, Detailed Design of Arms
Famous quotes containing the words suspension and/or design:
“If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn’t prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C)
“A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)