Progressive Rate Steel Vehicle Suspension
It is well known that progressiveness of the damping characteristic of vehicle suspension is a highly desirable feature that substantially improves shock absorption transmitted from the road wheels to the body of a vehicle. It is also well known that progressive rate vehicle suspensions with smooth (i.e. differentiable) damping characteristic commonly in use are pneumatic and hydro-pneumatic ones. However, these suspensions are inferior to steel ones in many aspects such as strength, durability, reliability and cost, and their damping characteristic, being determined by the thermodynamic properties (adiabatic exponent) of the gas (air or nitrogen) they utilize, cannot be freely adjusted and is far from optimum. There are also some progressive rate vehicle suspensions fitted with steel springs, but they usually features inferior non-differentiable damping characteristic. The problem of constructing purely mechanical steel progressive rate vehicle suspension has been undertaken by many inventors, but none of such suspensions proposed in the past was a success. This is due to the fact that those suspensions used unreliable and perishable cam mechanisms to achieve required non-linearity of damping characteristic. In the present article we briefly discuss an innovative recently patented [1-4] vehicle suspension, that produces progressive rate smooth damping characteristic out of linear characteristic of steel spring of any kind, which damping characteristic can be adjusted to any specific requirements, and which features extraordinarily compact and robust structure. It is to be stressed that the suspension presented in this paper has yet not been tested in a vehicle, but some measurements has been made using a steel model of a "flat" version of the suspension mechanism proving general assumptions behind the design.