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Suspension Unit

Introduction and insight into general suspension fundamentals

Why do we need suspension?


Why do we need suspension?
Why not install the spring under drivers seat, if driver

comfort is an answer!! What are the basic components of vehicle dynamics system? And how do they affect the behavior of the car? These are the basic questions that you can answer after this session.

Weight transfer during cornering


Whenever car is turning, its weight gets transferred to outer

wheels. And hence weight at the outer wheels will be more than the inner wheels.

Mathematical formulation of weight transfer


Assume car as a black box, And do not look at the internal

structure of the car. Now outward centrifugal force on the center of mass=(MV^2)/R M= Mass of the car, V=velocity of the car R=Turning radius of the car CG= height of the center of gravity from ground W= Track width of the car.

Applying moment balance about the contact point of one

wheel, we get dN=(F*CG)/W Hence while designing the car, our first concern should be decrease the roll center height as far as possible to avoid toppling, to facilitate cornering at higher speed. But they are other constraints such as roll center height because of which can not decrease it after some point. Why? We will come to that point if time permits.

Sprung mass: Mass of all the components which are

mounted above the spring. Such as, chassis, gearbox, engine, driver weight, batteries and other miscellaneous components. Unsprung mass: Mass of all the components which are below the spring. Such as tires, wheel assembly components, suspension members, brakes components etc.

Inside a wheel rim

Basic concept of Suspension geometry


Upright is fixed to the chassis. Hence no movements of upright with respect

to the chassis are allowed. apart from one vertical motion in vertical direction. But this motion is also constrained and hence spring comes into the picture. We need to have rotational movement to steer the vehicle and hence one member will be tie-rod and that will be controlled by steering wheel. Hence we need four members each constraining one degree of freedom, one tie rod and one spring constraining vertical motion. Instead of having four member constraining each motion we may have less no. of members and this time some members will restrict two motion.

There are different ways to create this mechanical arrangement, and that mechanical arrangement is called as suspension unit.

Types of suspension
Dependant suspension:
1. 2.

In this type of suspension, two wheels, either front rear are connected through an axle. Hence if one wheel encounter any bump or for that matter any disturbance, other wheel will also react.

Independent suspension:

In this type of suspension, disturbance or movement in one wheel does not cause any reaction in other wheel. 2. Typical types of independent suspension include, a. McPherson Strut b. Double Whisbone/Double A-arm c. Multilink Type d. Trailing Arm e. I-Beam suspension 3. We will look into each type suspension one by one.
1.

McPherson Strut type suspension

McPherson struts consist of a wishbone or a substantial compression link

stabilized by a secondary link which provides a bottom mounting point for the hub or axle of the wheel. This lower arm system provides both lateral and longitudinal location of the wheel. The upper part of the hub is rigidly fixed to the inner part of the strut proper, the outer part of which extends upwards directly to a mounting in the body shell of the vehicle. Mounting of spring/strut on the upright allows only rotational motion of strut inside the housing and no other movement is allowed. This way all the degrees of freedom gets restricted. And the positions as well as functioning of tie-rod remains the same.

Double whisbone Suspension

Coil Spring type 1


In this type, the lower arm carries most of the load. If you look head-on at this type of system, what you'll find is that it's a very

parallelogram system that allows the spindles to travel vertically up and down. When they do this, they also have a slight side-to-side motion caused by the arc that the wishbones describe around their pivot points. This side-to-side motion is known as scrub. Unless the links are infinitely long the scrub motion is always present. There are two other types of motion of the wheel relative to the body when the suspension articulates. The first and most important is a toe angle (steer angle). The second and least important, but the one which produces most pub talk is the camber angle, or lean angle. Steer and camber are the ones which wear tyres.

Coil Spring type 2

Multilink Suspension

This is the latest development of the double wishbone system described above.

The basic principle of it is the same, but instead of solid upper and lower wishbones,

each 'arm' of the wishbone is a separate item. These are joined at the top and bottom of the spindle thus forming the wishbone shape. As the spindle turns for steering, it alters the geometry of the suspension They have complex pivot systems designed to allow this to happen. This system gives even better road-holding properties, because all the various joints make the suspension almost infinitely adjustable. There are a lot of variations on this theme appearing at the moment, with huge differences in the numbers and complexities of joints, numbers of arms, positioning of the parts etc.

Trailing Arm Suspension

The trailing arm system a shaped suspension arm is joined at the front to

the chassis, allowing the rear to swing up and down. Pairs of these become twin-trailing-arm systems and work on exactly the same principle as the double wishbones in the systems described above. The difference is that instead of the arms sticking out from the side of the chassis, they travel back parallel to it. This is an older system not used so much any more because of the space it takes up, but it doesn't suffer from the side-to-side scrubbing problem of double wishbone systems..

I Beam suspension

This is a combination of trailing arm suspension and solid beam

axle suspension. Only in this case the beam is split in two and mounted offset from the centre of the chassis, one section for each side of the suspension. The trailing arms are actually (technically) leading arms and the steering gear is mounted in front of the suspension setup. This makes for a heavy-duty independent front suspension setup capable of handling the loads associated with their trucks. In an empty truck, however, going over a bump with twin I-beam suspension is like falling down stairs in leg irons.

Solid Axle Leaf spring

Solid Axle Coil spring

This is dependant type of suspension mostly used in the rear

suspension of trucks and heavy vehicles. This is very sturdy and strong suspension and hence used to carry highly loaded vehicles. Solid axle is necessary in some heavy vehicles because of integrated differential and drive shaft assembly.

Revisiting Weight Transfer


We have seen in earlier slides that suspension system is majorly

consists of spring, and suspension members, i.e. Aarms/whisbones. As we have discussed earlier, there are two types of masses. a. Sprung mass b. Unsprung mass When in cornering/braking/accelaration, weight transfer occurs, again weight transfer occurs in both the weighs, i.e. sprung and unsprung.

Unsprung weight transfer


Unsprung weight transfer will always occur through suspension members and

not through the spring.


That is because spring is used to mount sprung mass on wheels and hence it can

not take unsprung weight transfer.


Small note: From above discussion it is obvious that design of spring in any case

is not at all related to unsprung mass.


The weight transfer for cornering in the front would be equal to the total

unsprung front weight times the G-Force times the front unsprung center of gravity height divided by the front track width. The same is true for the rear.
So, who will take those imbalanced weight transfers?
Answer is, suspension members.

Sprung Weight transfer

Sprung weight transfer is the weight transferred by only the weight of the vehicle resting on the springs, not the total vehicle weight.
Calculating this requires knowing the vehicle's sprung weight (total weight less the unsprung weight), the front and rear roll center heights and the sprung center of gravity height (used to calculate the roll moment arm length). The roll axis is the line through the front and rear roll centres that the vehicle rolls around during cornering. The distance from this axis to the sprung centre of gravity height is the roll moment arm length. The total sprung weight transfer is equal to the cornering force times the sprung weight times the roll moment arm length divided by the effective track width. Calculating the front and rear sprung weight transfer will also require knowing the roll couple percentage. Some of the sprung weight transfer will be taken by spring and other by suspension member.

This amount depends on the roll moment arm length. More the length, more the weight transfer taken by spring. Since roll center is required to be below the CG, higher the roll center lower the rolling moment length will be, and hence lower forces will be taken by spring and more by suspension members.

Jacking forces
Now that we have seen the distribution of the weight transfer forces, we can calculate

how much forces will be there at spring and at suspension members. Jacking forces are the sum of the vertical force components experienced by the suspension links. Generally, the higher the roll centre, the more jacking force is experienced. As a part of suspension design we should always try to decrease the jacking forces as much as possible or to make springs take maximum weight transfer loads. This is Important because now we can design our suspension members smaller in dimensions. And hence weight of the car will be decreased. Weight of the suspension members is considered as unsprung mass and hence it is desirable to reduce on their weight.

Camber angle
Camber angle is the angle made by the wheels of a vehicle; specifically, it is the angle

between the vertical axis of the wheels used for steering and the vertical axis of the vehicle when viewed from the front or rear.
If the top of the wheel is farther out than the bottom (that is, away from the axle), it is

called positive camber; if the bottom of the wheel is farther out than the top, it is called negative camber.

Why do we need camber


Camber angle alters the handling qualities of a particular suspension design.

in particular, negative camber improves grip when cornering. This is because it places the tire at a better angle to the road, transmitting the forces properly.

Another reason for negative camber is that a rubber tire tends to roll on itself while cornering. If the tire had zero camber, the inside edge of the contact patch would begin to lift off of the ground, thereby reducing the area of the contact patch, ultimately reducing the grip.
By applying negative camber, this effect is reduced, thereby maximizing the contact patch area.. attained when the camber angle is zero and the tread is flat on the road.

On the other hand, for maximum straight-line acceleration, the greatest traction will be

Proper management of camber angle is a major factor in suspension design. in cornering.

And hence a rule in suspension design we have to try and minimize the change in camber

Caster angle
Measured in the longitudinal direction, It is the angle between the pivot line (in

a car - an imaginary line that runs through the centre of the upper ball joint to the centre of the lower ball joint) and vertical.

Why do we need caster angle

Steering returnability: Whenever we steer a vehicle/cycle tires experiences

lateral forces. Because of which and moment arm about the steering axis, a torque is generated and that will return the vehicle in straight direction.
This wouldnt have happened if the steering axis/caster angle is designed in

other way round. i.e. leaning backward instead of leaning forward.


Try it of you are comfortable with riding a cycle without hands on handle:

Leave the handle and slightly turn the handle after you achieving enough speed. Handle will come back to its initial position.
We want similar effect in the car steering for the sake of stability. i.e. small

disturbances should be taken care of.


And hence it is preferable to have leaning forward or positive camber.

Anti dive and anti squat


Anti-dive and anti-squat are percentages and refer to the front diving

under braking and the rear squatting under acceleration. We have seen earlier that if we think car as black box, then weight transfer will be the same. But how much of that load is taken by spring and how much by suspension member is determined by the amount of roll that chassis undergo. Same logic applies here, and hence They can be thought of as the counterparts for braking and acceleration as jacking forces are to cornering. The main reason for the difference is due to the different design goals between front and rear suspension, whereas suspension is usually symmetrical between the left and right of the vehicle.

Spring rate
Spring rate is nothing but the spring constant. Spring rate is a ratio used

to measure how resistant a spring is to being compressed or expanded during the spring's deflection. The magnitude of the spring force increases as deflection increases according to Hooke's Law. Briefly, this can be stated as F=-Kx The spring rate of a coil spring may be calculated by a simple algebraic equation or it may be measured in a spring testing machine. The spring constant k can be calculated as follows: K= ((d^4)*G)/(8*N*(D^3)) where d is the wire diameter, G is the spring's shear modulus and N is the number of wraps and D is the diameter of the coil.

Travel
Travel is the measure of distance from the bottom of the suspension stroke,

such as when the vehicle is on a jack or lifting and the wheel hangs freely, to the top of the suspension stroke, such as when the vehicle's wheel can no longer travel in an upward direction or bottoming toward the vehicle. "Bottoming" can be caused by the suspension, tires, fenders, etc. running out of space to move or the body or other components of the car hitting the road. Lifting refers to no downward movement is possible due to interference between suspension/chassis member, damper maxing out etc. While designing suspension system we have to take care that no members are interfering with each other before permissible suspension movement. It is a good idea to install a interfering member to avoid lifting, because lifting because of suspension member constrain may prove catastrophical in some cases.

Torsion Bar
Torsion bar is just another way of getting spring effect, other suspension system will be

exactly same as earlier.


One end of a long metal bar is attached firmly to the vehicle chassis; the opposite end

terminates in a lever, the torsion key, mounted perpendicular to the bar, that is attached to a suspension arm, a spindle, or the axle. Vertical motion of the wheel causes the bar to twist around its axis and is resisted by the bar's torsion resistance. The effective spring rate of the bar is determined by its length, cross section, shape and material.

Progressively wound springs

Hydra gas Suspension


Hydrolastic is a type of space-efficient automotive suspension system used in many cars. The heart of the system are the displacer units, which are pressurised spheres containing

nitrogen gas.
The system replaces the separate springs and dampers of a conventional suspension

system with integrated, space efficient, fluid filled, displacer units, which are interconnected between the front and rear wheels on each side of the vehicle.
These replace the conventional steel springs of a regular suspension design. The means

for pressurising the gas in the displacers is done by pre-pressurising a hydraulic fluid.

Hydro pneumatic Suspension


At the heart of the system, acting as pressure sink as well as suspension

elements, are the so called spheres, five or six in all; one per wheel and one main accumulator as well as a dedicated brake accumulator on some models. Spheres consist of a hollow metal ball, open to the bottom, with a flexible desmopan rubber membrane, fixed at the 'equator' inside, separating top and bottom. The top is filled with nitrogen at high pressure, up to 75 bar, the bottom connects to the car's hydraulic fluid circuit. Pressure flows from the hydraulic circuit to the suspension cylinders, pressurizing the bottom part of the spheres and suspension cylinders. Suspension works by means of a piston forcing fluid into the sphere, compacting the nitrogen in the upper part of the sphere.

damping is provided by a two-way 'leaf valve' in the opening of the sphere. Fluid

has to squeeze back and forth through this valve which causes resistance and controls the suspension movements. It is the simplest damper and one of the most efficient.

THANK YOU

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