Solutions in the Vehicle Suspension

Abstract

Abstract The paper presents a review of the suspension solutions used on the street vehicle up to the now a days, finalising with presentation of their damping characteristics and with evaluation of their advantages or disadvantages. Long time the suspension systems have been dominated by the classic passive suspensions realized with metallic springs, shock absorbers with constant damping coefficients and anti-roll bars, excepting some luxury and sport cars using semi-active and active suspensions. There are presented some semi-active suspension solutions with continuous or discontinuous damping characteristics adjustment and the evolution of the Citroen and other active suspensions. All of them improve in some matter the performances but all of them have not ability to recuperate energy and has auxiliary energy consumption so last period the electromagnetically shock absorbers are researched, the paper presenting some of them. The paper also presents magneto rheological MR damper, solutions for adjustable passive shock absorbers and solutions for passive shock absorbers with variable damping coefficient with the stroke, e.g. Monroe Sensa Trac, Citroën Solution and VZN solution, with their damping characteristics and performances.