Suspension Geometry

Basic Concept
Ride
Basically, suspensions are employed to deal with hump in road surface, in other words, enhancing ride comfort. When a car rides over a hump, the springs are compressed, store the energy thus provide shock absorption. The energy will be released quickly when the springs bounce back. Dampers are employed to smooth and slow down the bounce motion, this is called "Damping". Without dampers, the car will bounce up and down severely and quickly, this is perceived as uncomfortable. tudy found that ride is perceived as comfortable by human when the bouncing frequency is ! to !." #$. %f it e&peeds ' #$, most people feel the ride harsh. Therefore ride quality is mostly controlled by the selection of suitable springs and dampers.

Handling
%n order to achieve ride comfort, we create suspensions and let the wheels movable with respect to the car body. %nevitably, this create many many problems in handling. When the car is turning quickly into a bend, centrifugal force will roll the car body. Body roll leads to the weight transfer towards the outside wheels, it also changes the suspensions geometry which changes the camber angles of wheels. (hange of camber accompanies with weight transfer result in unwanted understeering or oversteering. %f brakes are applied in the bend, castor angles will also be changed, that may further deteriorated understeering ) oversteering or even introduces torque steer. *Don+t understand , -o problem, you will have a clearer view in the following paragraphs.

Camber - Decisive to understeering and oversteering

This is a very important concept. We must learn this before going on our study. /s shown in below, if a wheel is not perpendicular to the road, then it is cambered. %f it leans towards the center of the car, then it is negative cambered. %f it leans outwards to the car, it is positive cambered *as shown in the following picture.. When a wheel has positve camber, due to the elasticity of tyres, the wheel will be reshaped to something like the base of a cone. %t will have a tendency to rotate about the peak of the cone, as shown in the picture. -ow, you will see the wheel tries to steer away from the center of the car.

%f both the right and left wheels are positive cambered *that means they lean towards opposite directions., the steering tendency will be cancelled so that the car remains running in straight line. %f the car is turning into a corner, body roll puts more weight on the outside wheels than the inside wheels, that means the outside wheel+s steering tendency will have more influence to the car. /s the positive0cambered outside wheel tries to steer the car to the outside of the corner, the car will be understeered. 1n the contrary, if both wheels are negative cambered, the car will oversteer.

A Good Suspension must :

!. 2rovide independent shock absorption to individual wheels. That means, when one wheel rides over a hump, the shock will not be transferred to other wheels. '. #as adequate body roll. 3&cessive body roll leads to too much weight transfer thus influence the steering response. %t is not comfortable too. 4estrict body roll to minimal may create uncomfortable feeling because of e&cessive g0force. 5oreover, body roll could provide information to the driver, telling him the state of cornering and whether the car has reached its limit. (ompletely eliminate body roll is not at all good. 6. #as a good geometry such that wheel cambers remain unchanged in all conditions, that is, acceleration, braking, cornering, load and bumps. Body roll suppression usually conflict with ride comfort, because the former requires stiffer spring and dampers while the latter vice versa. -evertheless, clever suspension geometry may improve body roll without altering the ride. #ere in below we are going to discuss the most popular kinds of suspension geometry.

Non-independent suspension
Live / Dead axle
7ntil the late 89s, most cars still used this simple non0independent suspensions, especially at the rear a&le. Basically, it is a rigid a&le fi&ed between left and right wheels. The car body is suspended by leaf springs or coil springs on the a&le ) wheels unit. /s you can see, the wheels are not independent. When one wheel rides on a hump, the shock will be transferred to another wheel. Besides, both wheels will be cambered, thus non0neutral steering is inevitable.

%f the a&le is also the driving a&le, it is called Live Axle. :ive a&le is very heavy. %t consists of the final drive ) differential, drive shafts and a strong tube enclosing all these things. ince the whole a&le is rigidly fi&ed to the wheels instead of suspended by springs, the so0called Unsprung Weig t is very high. What is the result of high unsprung weight , /ssuming a live a&le meets a hump and ";ump" quickly upward, the more weight it has, the more momentum it gains *because momentum < the product of mass and velocity.. That means the more momentum the springs have to deal with. 1f course, springs cannot absorb all the momentum, so eventually part of the latter will be transferred to the car body in the form of shock. Therefore live a&le is never good at ride quality. %f the a&le is not the driving a&le, it is called Dead Axle. Without the driving mechanism incorporated, dead a&le has much less unsprung weight, so its ride quality is better than :ive /&le. /nyway, comparing them is useless 0 it does not make sense for a car to use dead a&le in the non0drive wheels while using a suspension advancer than live a&le in the driving wheels. %ndependent 5ac2herson suspension is rather easy and cost0effectively to replace the non0drive dead a&le. %f a car maker cannot afford such little additional cost, it must not willing to employ advancer suspensions in the driving wheels also. :ive ) Dead /&le have another disadvantage 0 body roll is not sufficiently suppressed. prings are the only element which control the body roll, however, stiffen the springs will inevitably deteriorate ride quality. 5oreover, if coil springs are used, lateral force due to cornering will lead to transverse movement of the car body, thus result in weight transfer and affect steering response. The popular solution was to add some control arms between the car body and the a&le, such as 2anhard rod and Watt link. #owever, they are out of our scope.

/dvantage=

(heap. Body roll does not influence the camber of wheels.

Disadvantage= -on0independent, bad ride quality, both wheels cambered on bump. Who use it , ome /merican sedans, >ord 5ustang, >alcon, most 7?.

DeDion Axle
/lthough independent suspensions were invented decades ago, non0independent suspensions still dominated the market until the late 89s. The first reason was= cheap. The second reason= it offers quite good handling despite of poor ride. ince the wheels are rigidly linked by an a&le, they remain perpendicular to the road surface regardless of body roll. Therefore the car corners quite stable. %n contrast, in many types of independent suspensions, camber angle may be changed due to body roll.

#owever, as e&plained before, live a&le has too much unsprung weight, thus leads to poor ride quality. Therefore many budget sports cars or coupes chose DeDion /&le *rear. suspensions over live a&le. DeDion a&le suspension has much less unsprung weight because the final drive ) differential and driving shafts are not rigidly attached to the wheels. :ike independent suspensions, they are part of the car body and fle&ibly linked to the wheels by universal ;oints. %n other words, they are sprung. The wheels are interconnected by a DeDion Tube, which has a sliding ;oint to permit wheel track variation during suspension movement, this help refining ride quality too. The DeDion tube keeps both wheels parellel to each other under all conditions, so they are always perpendicular to the road surface regardless of body roll.

/dvantage=

till cheaper than most independent suspensions. Body roll does not influence the camber of wheels. Better ride quality than :ive /&le.

Disadvantage= -on0independent, ride is still worse than independent suspensions. Both wheels cambered on bump. Who use it , (aterham, ?ector, mart.

Independent Suspensions
Swing axle suspension

This is a very old independent suspension, used by some sports cars since the "9s, such as ?W Beetle, 2orsche 6"@ *which was based on Beetle. and 5ercedes+ famous 699 : Aullwing *!B"C.. #owever, it disappeared for at least ' decades because it has so much weakness. The only advantage is 0 it provides independent shock absorption. #andling is really awful, as camber angle can be noticeably changed by bouncing motion *as shown in the first picture., change of static weight of the car *second picture. and body roll *third picture.. 3specially is the body roll, which makes both wheels lean towards the corner, thus result in severe oversteer. This e&plain why the 5ercedes 699 : Aullwing was criticised as very unpredictable and difficult to handle. (amber variation can be reduced via using longer swing arms, but this could create problems in packaging. %t engages the space for rear seats and even the boot. /nother solution is to introduce inherent understeer by setting the wheels negative cambered. This could compensate the oversteer during cornering but the drawback is the instability in straight line. To cars as slow as ?W Beetle, swing a&le shows its advantage in ride comfort over contemporary non0independent suspensions while the weakness in handling is not easily seen. >or 2orsche 6"@, at least in the less0powerful early versions, the problem is not severe, too. %n later years, when the car got bigger and bigger engine, 2orsche realised that the days for swing a&le had nearly finished. That came true when the B!! launched in !B@6, used trailing arm at the rear instead of swing a&le.

/dvantage=

%ndependent ride.

Disadvantage= ?ery bad handling. Who use it , 5ercedes 699 : *!B"C., ?W Beetle, 2orsche 6"@ etc.

Dou le wis! ones suspension

To many suspension designers, double wishbones *or "/0 arms". is the most ideal suspension. %t can be used in front and rear wheels, it is independent and most important, it has near perfect camber control. >or C9 years and even today, this is the first choice for racing cars, sports cars and demanding sedans. Basically, double wishbones suspension always maintains the wheel perpendicular to the road surface, irrespective of the wheel+s movement. This ensure good handling. Traditional double wishbones consists of ' parellel wishbone arms of equal length, which has the drawback of e&cessive tire scrubbing because of the large variation in track width as the wheel moved off the neutral position. Therefore engineers developed une!uallengt non0parellel /0arms to solve this. By tilting the upper /0arm, anti0dive function is also achieved.

"" #orsc e $$%&s rear suspension Double wishbones suspension has been very popular in /merican cars. -ot so in 3urope because cars in there are smaller thus cannot accommodate this relatively space0 engaging suspension. Besides, it is more costly than 5ac2herson strut and torsion beam because it involves more components and more suspension pick up points in the car body. 1wing to these reasons, very few small cars adopt it. 1ne of the few e&amples is #onda (ivic. This does not mean /merican cars have better handling. -o, due to their larger si$e and weight and the less effort spent in suspension tuning, the ma;ority of double wishbones0equipped /merican cars actually handles worse.

/dvantage= Disadvantage= Who use it ,

%deal camber control leads to good handling. pace engaging and costly. /merican sports cars and some sedans, most 3uropean pure sports cars like >errari, T?4, :otus .... some 3uopean sedans, most #onda .... many many many.

"ac#!erson strut suspension

The 5ac2herson strut suspension was invented in the !BC9s by 3arl . 5ac2herson of >ord. %t was introduced on the !B"9 3nglish >ord and has since become one of the dominating suspensions systems of the world because of its compactness and low cost. 7nlike other suspension designs, in 5ac2herson strut suspension, the telescopic shock absorber also serves as a link to control the position of the wheel. Therefore it saves the upper control arm. Besides, since the strut is vertically positioned, the whole suspension is very compact. To front0wheel drive cars, whose engine and transmission are all located inside the front compartment, they need front suspensions which engage very little width of the car. 7ndoubtedly, 5ac2hersion strut suspension is the most suitable one. -evertheless, this simple design does not offer very good handling. Body roll and wheel+s movement lead to variation in camber, although not as severe as swing a&le suspension. >rom a designer+s viewpoint, its relatively high overall height requires a higher hood and fender line, which is not very desirable to sports cars+ styling.

"" H'undai Ato(&s )ac# erson strut :ike double wishbones suspension, 5ac2herson strut can be adopted in both front and rear wheels. %n the D9s, there are many budget sedans employed 5ac strut in all corners, the most famous is >iat+s Type C and Tipo platforms, on which >iat (roma, :ancia Thema, aab B999, >iat Tipo, Tempra, :ancia Delta, Dedra etc. were based. -one of them was famous of handling. Basically, /lfa 4omeo+s AT? ) pider is also based on the Tipo platform, however, after e&perienced unsatisfatory handling during testing, the rear 5ac2herson struts were replaced by the pricier multi0link suspensions.

/dvantage=

(ompact and cheap.

Disadvantage= /verage handling. Who use it , 5ost front0wheel drive compact cars.

$railing arm and Semi-trailing arm suspension

(ompare with the following rear suspensions, Trailing arm ) emi0trailing arm suspensions are rather old. %t was commonly used in nearly all mid0price to high0price sedans before multi0link rear suspension became popular in !BB9s. >rom +D' B5W 60series to 5ercedes "@9 3(, even the 2orsche B!!, trailing arm ) semi0trailing arm suspensions dominated half the world. *railing arm suspension *the upper picture. employs two trailing arms which are pivoted to the car body at the arm+s front edge. The arm is relatively large compare with other suspensions+ control arms because it is in single piece and the upper surface supports the coil spring. %t is rigidly fi&ed to the wheel at the other end. -ote that it only allows the wheel to move up and down to deal with bump. /ny lateral movement and camber change *with respect to the car body. is not allowed. -evertheless, when the car rolls into a corner, the trailing arm rolls for the same degree as the car body, thus changes camber angle *with respect to the road surface.. -ow, you can see both wheels lean towards the outside of the corner, thus lead to understeer. Because of this reason, pure trailing arm was forgotten by car makers long long ago. %nstead of it, they adopted semi0trailing arm. Semi-trailing arm suspension *the lower picture. has the trailing arm pivoted at inclined angles 0 about "9 to 89 degrees. 1therwise are the same as trailing arm suspension. /pparently, the semi0trailing arms are half trailing and half transverse. Eou can analyse it by splitting it into two vectors, one is the trailing component and another is the transverse component. The trailing component leads to understeer, as already mentioned. 1n the other hand, the transverse component is actually equals to a swing a&le suspension. -ow, you may remember that the swing a&le suspension always introduce oversteer due to body roll. /s a result, the two components cancel each other and result in near neutral steering response. emi0trailing has a disadvantage 0 when the wheel moves up and down, camber angle changes, unlike double wishbones suspension. -o matter semi0trailing arm or pure trailing arm suspensions, since they are rigidly attached to the wheels, inevitably more shock and noise could be transferred to the car body, especially under hard cornering or running on bumpy roads. 5oreover, a lot of unsprung weight of the trailing arm leads to poorer ride quality. Therefore most modern sedans replace it with multi0link or double wishbones suspension. Trailing arm ) emi0

trailing is disappearing in the industry.

/dvantage=

/ll round, few weakness.

Disadvantage= :ess refined than multi0link. Who use it , 5any sedans and coupes.

$orsion eam suspension

5ost modern mini cars up to (0segment *for instance, ?W Aolf. employ torsion beam as the rear suspension. Why, compare with double wishbones, multi0link and trailing arm suspensions, it engages little width of the car, thus enable greater rear seat room. %t is cheaper too. (ompare with 5ac2herson strut, its shock absorber is shorter and can be inclined steeply away from the vertical, thus engage less boot space. %n fact, torsion beam suspension is only half0independent 0 there is a torsion beam connecting both wheels together, which allows limited degree of freedom when forced. >or some less demanding compact cars, this save the anti0roll bars. 1n the contrary, it doesn+t provide the same level of ride and handling as double wishbones or multi0link suspensions, although in reality it is superior to its only direct competitor, 5ac2herson strut. 5ost of the 3urope+s best handling AT%s employed this suspenion.

Gol+&s torsion beam rear suspension ,iat #unto&s torion beam

/dvantage=

(ompact, cheap.

Disadvantage= Theoretically inferior ride and handling. Who use it , 5ost 3uropean mini cars up to Aolf0class.

"ulti-lin% suspension

ince the late D9s, multi0link rear suspension is increasingly used in modern sedans and coupes. The earliest applicants include -issan '99 F, %nfiniti GC", 5ercedes 0class and B5W 60 eries etc. %t is difficult to describe its construction because it is not strictly defined. %n theory, any independent suspensions having 6 control arms or more are multi0link. Different designs may have very different geometry and characteristic, for e&ample, B5W+s multilink looks like a letter "H", thus gave its name "H0a&le". %t is relatively space0engaging but offers very good handlingI #onda /ccord+s multi0link is essentially a double wishbones suspension added with the fifth control arm. /udi /C+s Guadralink front suspension has four links. %t looks alike double wishbones but eliminates torque steer.

"" Honda Accord&s --lin. rear suspension %t is too early to say whether multi0link suspension offer handling on a par with double wishbones. 5ost sports cars and all the best racing cars still use double wishbones. 1nly 2orsche BB6 and BB@, -issan kyline AT04 etc. chose multi0link instead. #owever, it seems that multi0link can offer better compromise between handling and space efficiency, as more and more sedans adopt it. #onda, which used to be a loyal supporter of double wishbones, shifted to multi0link setup in the latest /ccord could be an evidence. /dvantage= Aood handling and ride.

Disadvantage= -ot as cheap and as compact as 5ac2herson and Torsion beam. Who use it , 5id0si$e to lu&urious sedans.

&eissac! axle suspension

%n the mid089s, 2orsche developed this unique rear suspension for its award0winning B'D. Basically it is a variant of semi0trailing arm suspension. %n any suspensions, the pivot ;oints must be inserted with rubber bushing to absorb noise and vibration. >or conventional semi0trailing arm suspension *first row in the following picture., whenever under braking, the momentum of the car body tries to pull the car "away" from the rear suspension. Due to the elasticity of the rubber bushing, the rear wheel will toe0out. /s a result, the car will oversteer. Weissach a&le was designed to eliminate this oversteer *second row in the picture.. By splitting one trailing link into two pieces, with a pivot ;oint added between them, the oversteer under braking can be elinimated or even introduce some understeer J This help stabli$ing the cornering motion. ome people call it as "passive rear0wheel steering".

Who use it ,

2orsche B'D.

$railing arm and Semi-trailing arm suspension

(ompare with the following rear suspensions, Trailing arm ) emi0trailing arm suspensions are rather old. %t was commonly used in nearly all mid0price to high0price sedans before multi0link rear suspension became popular in !BB9s. >rom +D' B5W 60series to 5ercedes "@9 3(, even the 2orsche B!!, trailing arm ) semi0trailing arm suspensions dominated half the world. *railing arm suspension *the upper picture. employs two trailing arms which are pivoted to the car body at the arm+s front edge. The arm is relatively large compare with other suspensions+ control arms because it is in single piece and the upper surface supports the coil spring. %t is rigidly fi&ed to the wheel at the other end. -ote that it only allows the wheel to move up and down to deal with bump. /ny lateral movement and camber change *with respect to the car body. is not allowed. -evertheless, when the car rolls into a corner, the trailing arm rolls for the same degree as the car body, thus changes camber angle *with respect to the road surface.. -ow, you can see both wheels lean towards the outside of the corner, thus lead to understeer. Because of this reason, pure trailing arm was forgotten by car makers long long ago. %nstead of it, they adopted semi0trailing arm. Semi-trailing arm suspension *the lower picture. has the trailing arm pivoted at inclined angles 0 about "9 to 89 degrees. 1therwise are the same as trailing arm suspension. /pparently, the semi0trailing arms are half trailing and half transverse. Eou can analyse it by splitting it into two vectors, one is the trailing component and another is the transverse component. The trailing component leads to understeer, as already mentioned. 1n the other hand, the transverse component is actually equals to a swing a&le suspension. -ow, you may remember that the swing a&le suspension always introduce oversteer due to body roll. /s a result, the two components cancel each other and result in near neutral steering response. emi0trailing has a disadvantage 0 when the wheel moves up and down, camber angle changes, unlike double wishbones suspension. -o matter semi0trailing arm or pure trailing arm suspensions, since they are rigidly attached to the wheels, inevitably more shock and noise could be transferred to the car body, especially under hard cornering or running on bumpy roads. 5oreover, a lot of unsprung weight of the trailing arm leads to poorer ride quality. Therefore most modern sedans replace it with multi0link or double wishbones suspension. Trailing arm ) emi0

trailing is disappearing in the industry.

/dvantage=

/ll round, few weakness.

Disadvantage= :ess refined than multi0link. Who use it , 5any sedans and coupes.