Contents

Research .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Leaf spring suspension ........................................................................................................................ 3 Torsion bars ........................................................................................................................................ 3 MacPherson ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Multi- link suspension ......................................................................................................................... 5 Double wishbone ................................................................................................................................ 5 Trailing arm ......................................................................................................................................... 6 The joints used ........................................................................................................................................ 7 Pin joint ............................................................................................................................................... 7 Slider joint ........................................................................................................................................... 9 Default............................................................................................................................................... 10 Final suspension assembly .................................................................................................................... 11 References ............................................................................................................................................ 13

Research
The suspension on the car is very important; it gives the car stability, handling, comfort and safety. Without it the driver will not be able to control the car therefore is a key part in the safety of cars. The main types of suspension are leaf spring, double wishbone and torsion bars. A good suspension system should be able to give good ride and handling, this is the ability to smooth out a bumpy road. The suspension system should also have good handling. This is the ability to safely accelerate, brake and corner. The role of the suspension is to keep the tyres in contact to the road and make the best use of the contact patch.

Leaf spring suspension

Leaf spring suspension is layers of metal bars bound together to act as one unit.

Centre bolt

Eye

Rebound clips

The more leaves there are in the spring the harder the suspension is. This type of suspension was the first suspension system added to the first production cars with fixed axels. Nowadays it is most commonly on commercial vehicles to aid in carrying large loads. It is not used on common production vehicles because it has limited handling capabilities. However it is still used by corvette on the rear axle of their cars.

Torsion bars
Torsion bars are flexible bars that are moved about via twisting. They work by resisting the torque that is places upon them. When one end is attached to an object that cant be moved, the other end twist which causes the torque build up. When this happens the torsion bar is resistant to the torque and will go back to its original place when the force is removed. This creates the spring force. Torsion bar

Where the torsion bar is fixed to the car.

These are more commonly found on old cars however currently found on high end motorsport applications. An advantage of torsion bars is that they dont take any room out of the useable space in the car; however they need a lot of space across the length of the car. They are also easily adjustable; they can be adjusted 50mm in either direction. Torsion bars are also light weight which saves weight on the car which can improve handling, acceleration and breaking. Another advantage to torsion bars are that they are cheap to engineer, therefore cheap to buy. The drawbacks of torsion bars are that they do not provide progressive spring rates. Progressive spring rates are where the springs have different distances between the springs. This gives the car firmer steering, handling and breaking while also giving a better ride. Whereas torsion bars can be set for a firm ride with the loss of smoothness, or a smooth ride with the expense of handling qualities.

MacPherson
MacPherson struts are simple in design, the spring and damper are in one unit and it gives structural support to the suspension system. They can be located at the front and rear of the car however they are more commonly found at the front. This is because it uses a lot of vertical room so it cuts into either boot space or rear passenger space. An advantage of the MacPherson strut is that it gives good ride and handling suitable for road cars which is why it come as standard to most road cars. It also gives the chance to upgrade the suspensions with such things as coil overs to improve the quality of handling however at a cost of road comfort.

Spring and damper

Another advantage the MacPherson strut is that it is cheap to manufacture which is another reason why car manufactures prefer this suspension system.

A disadvantage of this system is that it does provide vertical movement in the wheel without some change in camber angle or sideways movement. As standard they do not allow any adjustability.

Multi- link suspension

This is type of suspension uses three or more lateral arms and one or more longitudinal arms; they dont have to be an equal length and can also be angled away from their natural direction. This type of suspension system can be used on either the front or rear suspension systems and it is the best compromise between handling and space efficiency. It also allows the vehicle to flex more which is a good solution for off-roading vehicles. Another advantage is to the designer, you can make design changes to this type of suspension without influencing the design of the car. The disadvantage with multi-link suspension is the cost to design and engineer the system as it is costly to manufacture its complex system. Once the system has been made it needs design analysis software to make sure it is designed properly and will function in the correct way.

These are the many points which attach to the cars chassis.

spring

damper

Double wishbone
In a double wishbone suspension system the components of the suspension is between two wishbones. Each wishbone has two mounting points connecting to the chassis and one more connecting to the hub. The shock absorber and springs are usually connected to the bottom wishbone near the hub and between the two connections on the chassis. These connect to the chassis. Wishbone and spring Hub

The advantages of double wishbone suspension are that it is relatively easy to set up and work out the effects of moving joints. The benefits of this are that mechanics and engineers can work out the optimum set up to maximise wheel motion and contact patch. In motorsport it is advantages to have a set up that can be changed easily for example during testing and practise where changes need to be made quickly no time will be lost. It is also advantages because it is easy to work out the loads at each part of the suspension which is beneficial when testing new parts. The disadvantage to double wishbone suspension is that it is slightly more complex than other systems meaning that it is more costly to manufacture and build. It is also slightly heavier than other suspension systems such as the MacPherson system.

Trailing arm
This type of suspension is designed one or more arms connected between the chassis and the axle. It is connected at the front however allows the rear to move up and down. Trailing arms are a supple independent suspension system for the rear of the car, where each wheel hub is located by a large roughly triangular arm that pivots at two points. Spring and damper This is where the system is connected to the car Hub

The advantage of this system is that when it is used in the rear of the car it allows for a flatter floor space which is advantages for commercial vehicles. It is also cheap to manufacture and design which is an advantage because it saves money on production cost. The disadvantages of this suspension system are that it takes up a lot of room on the chassis which means that you have to design the chassis around the suspension system. When attached to the front of the car it is difficult to attach the steering system to the car. It gives good ride and handling, however most suspension systems give a smoother ride and better handling. The suspension system I have chosen build is the double wishbone suspension system. This is because this is the suspension most commonly used in motorsport and the system I have the most experience working on.

The joints used

The tree different joint that I used in my CAD model were pin, slider and the default object. A pin joint is the joint which connect the wishbones and damper to the chassis and hub. It is where there is a male and a female section, the wishbone being male and chassis being female. There is a whole which goes through both sections and held together by a bolt.

Pin joint
To make the pin joint in CAD you set one section as the default, in this case the chassis is the default. Then you need to select the axis of the wishbone where the hole was made for the bot, to the axis of where the hole was made to fit the wishbone.

These are the two axes

The next step is to coincident the outside of the wishbone to the inside of the slot on the chassis. To do this simply click the edge of the wishbone you wish to mate with the side of the slot you want to join to.

These are the two sides which need to align.

If the sizes are correct the other side of the wishbone should not need to be aligned. To place the bolt in the correct place you need to bring it into the assembly and leave the settings default. The next step is to align the axes.

These are the two axes.

To make it match up to the hole you need to change the reference box from distance to coincident.

To make the bolt fit exactly into the hole you need to select the edge of the bolt and the face of the bracket.

Slider joint
The next joint I used was the slider joint; This joint was used for the shock absorber. To do this the first part to bring in is the bottom end of the shock and set it as default. Then bring in the second part and set the joint as slider. Then select the axis on the new part and set it to the slider on the default.

These are the axes that have been joined up.

The next stage is to stop the shock from rotating, and to do this you select a datum plane on each part that lines up the hole on the top in the same direction.

These are the two datum planes which line up

When selecting the datum planes, they need to be in the same orientation to get the holes the same direction.

The next step is the translation axis. This is the relationship between two pints on the axis. The two point that need to be used are the bottom the piston and the bottom of the hole. Then the next step is to put in maximum and minimum limits for the translation so the piston doesnt go through the bottom or come out the top.

This where the maximum and minimum values are set, first you need to active them and slide the piston to where they should be set and use the current position bar to measure where it should go.

These are where the translation points are selected to determine where the maximum and minimum values are measure from.

Default
The joint that was used to build the suspension around was the default function. The first part you put into the assembly is set at the default so that you can build around it. In the suspension system, the default part for CAD is the chassis. This is because it has no moving features and everything needs to be built around it.

This where you make the selection to change the object to default to fix it in place.

To let you know that you that the part has become the default, the colour changes from purple to gold.

The benefit of this is that it lest you know it is fully constrained and is the object is the base reference for the other components.

Final suspension assembly

The suspension system that I have chosen to create on CAD is the double wishbone suspension system.

The images above are rended pictures of my final assembly. The chassis, wishbones and hubs are made out of aluminium and finished with a cast aluminium finish, the tyres are rubber, the damper is made out of aluminium, however the bottom part is finished with anodized blue and the top part is finished with polished aluminium. This is the same with the wheel. The inner hub is made of aluminium and finished with anodized red and the outer hub is made of aluminium and finished with cast aluminium.

These are all the pin joints in my assembly; they are the same on the other side.

This is where the slider joint is in the damper.

The previous image shows where the different joints went into my assembly. The pint joint is there to allows rotation around the joint and the slider is there to allow movement along an axis which is what the damper needs. The mechanisms I placed in the assembly were the damper and springs on the shock absorbers and servo motors on the wheels. The damper is there for when the suspension drops, to cushion the bounce and the spring is there to rebound to reset the damper. The servo motors are there to move the wheels and give the assembly propulsion.

References
How a Torsion Bar Works | eHow.com. 2013. How a Torsion Bar Works | eHow.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5459141_torsion-bar. [Accessed 07 January 2013]. Suspension:parts,design and layouts.. 2013. Suspension:parts,design and layouts.. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.rapid-racer.com/suspension.php. [Accessed 07 January 2013]. How Multi-Link Suspension Works - autoevolution. 2013. How Multi-Link Suspension Works autoevolution. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-multi-linksuspension-works-7804.html. [Accessed 07 January 2013]. Car Bibles : The Car Suspension Bible page 1 of 5. 2013. Car Bibles : The Car Suspension Bible page 1 of 5. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.carbibles.com/suspension_bible.html. [Accessed 07 January 2013]. (Front)Trailing-Arm Suspension questions... [Archive] - DIY Go Kart Forum. 2013. (Front)Trailing-Arm Suspension questions... [Archive] - DIY Go Kart Forum. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.diygokarts.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-6868.html. [Accessed 07 January 2013]. What Is a Rear Trailing Arm? | eHow.com. 2013. What Is a Rear Trailing Arm? | eHow.com. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ehow.com/facts_5821541_rear-trailing-arm_.html. [Accessed 07 January 2013].