Car Parts and Accessories

Reason for Auto Suspension

If road engineers could build perfect roads, there would be no need for cars to have a complex suspension system to cushion the occupants.

A good suspension system must have springiness and damping. Springiness is an elastic resistance to a load; damping is the ability to absorb some of the energy of a spring after it has been compressed. If this energy is not absorbed, a spring will seriously overshoot its original position and continue to bounce up and down until eventually its oscillations die out.

Damping converts work energy into heat energy. To reduce noise and add further softness, springs are mounted on rubber; and a car’s suspension system incorporates a final cushioning in seating the occupants’ bodies, as a last-stage protection against vibration.

The size of the wheels is an important factor. A large wheel will ride over most road irregularities. A wheel big enough to iron out all irregularities would be impracticable; but a wheel should not be so small that it will roll into every hollow.

Types of Auto Springs and their uses

In fulfilling their primary functions of cushioning the body and occupants of a car from road shocks, the springs act as reservoirs of energy.

Steel springs store this energy by being bent, as in the case of leaf springs, or by being twisted, as in the case of coil springs or the rod in a torsion-bar spring. The energy is released by the spring resuming its normal state.

Leaf springs are referred to as semi- elliptic, although they are almost flat.

Usually the two ends are attached to the car frame or structure by bolts supported in rubber bushes, and the middle of the spring is clamped to the axle. If the spring is fitted across the body, the middle is located on the frame and the ends on the wheel carriers.

The best energy-storing shape for a given weight of spring is circular; and a coil spring efficiently stores the energy produced by up-and-down movement.

Where coil springs are used, the end coils usually sit square, for stability, upon the surfaces through which the load is applied, and act as the lever for the twist to be applied to the rest of the spring.

A torsion bar, which has one end anchored to the car structure and the other to a component subjected to loading, stores energy when it is twisted.

The torsion bar is often used as an anti- roll device. A steel bar is mounted in rubber bushes across the vehicle, with its ends bent round to act as levers, which in turn are connected to the suspension.

When the wheels go up and down as a pair, the anti-roll bar merely rotates in its bearings without effect on the suspension. But when only one wheel rises or falls, or the body rolls on a bend, the torsion bar twists, reacting against the movement.

Rubber is used in various ways for springing. It is most effective in a combination of shear (side-to-side movement of successive layers) and compression.

An important example is the Moulton Hydrolastic system; in it, the main suspension medium is still rubber springiness, but fluid is used to transmit the movement of the wheels from front to rear, or vice versa.

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