Suspension System : All Things You Need To Know About Suspension System

 

Suspension System

 

Do You Know How Much Suspension System Is Important?

The automobile chassis is mounted on the axles, not direct but through some form of springs. This is done to isolate the vehicle body from the road shocks which may be in the form of bounce, pitch, roll or sway. These tendencies gives rise to an uncomfortable ride and also cause additional stress in the automobile frame and body. All the parts which perform the function of isolating the automobile from the road shocks are collectively called as suspension system. It includes the springing device used and various mountings for the same. Broadly speaking, suspension system consists of a spring and a damper. The energy of road shock causes the spring to oscillate. These oscillations are restricted to a reasonable level by the damper, which is more commonly called a shock absorber. The main objectives to incorporate a suspension system is to prevent the road shocks from being transmitted to the vehicle components, to safeguard the occupants and to preserve stability of the vehicle in pitching or rolling, while in motion. 

 

Functions Of Suspension Springs

Springs are placed between the road wheels and the body. When the wheel comes across a bump on the road, it rises and deflects the spring, thereby storing energy therein. On releasing, due to the elasticity of the spring material, it rebounds thereby expending the stored energy. In this way the spring starts vibrating with amplitude decreasing gradually on account of internal friction of the spring material and friction of suspension joints till vibrations die.

 

Types Of Suspension Springs

There are various types of suspension spring that are used in automobile industries but the widely used springs used in suspension are steel springs, rubber springs, plastic springs, air springs and hydraulic springs. Steel springs include leaf springs, tapered leaf spring, coil spring and torsion bar and among them leaf springs are widely used. These springs are almost universally used for suspension in light and heavy commercial vehicles, for cars also, widely used in front suspension but now completely replaced by coil springs.

Shock Absorbers

A springing device must be compromise between flexibility and stiffness. If it is more rigid, it will not absorb road shocks efficiently and if it is more flexible it will continue to vibrate even after bump has passed. So we must have sufficient damping of the spring to prevent excessive flexing. The friction between the leaves of a leaf spring provides this damping but because of the uncertainty of lubrications conditions, the amount of friction also varies and hence damping characteristics do not remain constant. For this reason the friction between the springs is reduced to minimum and additional damping is provided by means of devices called dampers or shock absorbers. In case of coil springs, the whole of damping is provided by the shock absorbers. The shock absorbers thus control the excessive spring vibrations.

The shock absorbers are of two types namely the friction type and hydraulic type. The friction type has almost become obsolete due to its non predictable damping characteristics. The principle of operation of a hydraulic shock absorber is that a when a piston forces the fluid in a cylinder to through same hole, a high resistance to movement of piston is developed which provides the damping effect. The hydraulic type has additional advantage that is the damping is proportional to the square of the speed. So for small vibrations the damping is also small while for larger ones the damping becomes automatically more. 

 

Dilip Kumar 

Author

 

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