All information about car suspension

 What Is Suspension In A Car?

Suspension is the system of tires, tire air, springs, shock absorbers, and linkages that connects a vehicle to its wheels and allow relative movement between the two. Suspension systems must support both road holding/handling and ride quality, which is at odds with each other

Tuning of suspensions is all about finding the right compromise. It is important that the suspension keeps the road wheel in contact with the road surface as much as possible, as any road or ground forces acting on the vehicle will do so through the contact patches of the tires.

The suspension also protects the vehicle itself and any cargo or luggage from damage and wear and tear. The design of the front and rear suspension of a car can be different.

Put simply, it’s a part of a car that negates most of the forces the car receives from driving on the road and keeps the cabin quiet. It can be small rocks on the road or big potholes, the suspension can handle them.

This is a normal understanding we have that a suspension’s job is only to provide a cushion when a bump or crack occurs in the road. It does a lot more than that. Honestly, it makes a car easier to drive. 

What Does A Car Suspension Do?

In short, your car’s suspension system is a protective lattice of shock-absorbing components such as springs and dampers. Your car’s suspension helps ensure you drive safely and smoothly by absorbing the energy of various road bumps and other kinetic shocks. In addition, it helps your tires stay in contact with the road by increasing tire friction.

To fully understand what your suspension does, you need to understand what would happen if your car didn’t have it.

When driving on the road, your car’s tires naturally roll over various imperfections and bumps. These bumps interact with your car’s wheels, applying force each time. The laws of physics dictate that any force exerted on an object has magnitude and direction.

Hitting a bump in the road, it forces your wheel to move up and down at a perpendicular angle (vertical relative to the road surface). Of course, small bumps don’t transfer much vertical kinetic energy to your car. But major road bumps or surface imperfections can transfer quite a bit of energy.

It’s common sense; When your car’s wheels hit a bump, your car gains energy and jerks up or down.

If you didn’t have suspension, all that energy would be transferred into your car’s frame. This type of energy transfer can make driving uncomfortable at best. Additionally, your car could lose grip on the road, which would cause the wheels to bounce and then slam back onto the road surface.

Your car’s suspension:

• Absorbs the energy transferred through your car’s wheels

• Helps your car cabin to ride atop the suspension relatively smoothly, even when riding on imperfect roads

Why Is Your Car Suspension So Important?

Any modern car is equipped with a suspension due to its advantages. For example:

• Suspension systems maximize the friction between your car’s tires and the road. By maximizing friction, you can steer your vehicle more stably and experience more comfortable handling. The more contact your tires have with the road, the safer and more confident you can drive.

• Your car’s suspension system also provides additional comfort. By limiting the kinetic energy transferred to your cabin from road imperfections such as bumps, you will experience much less bobbing and your passengers will also enjoy a smoother ride.

• In addition, suspension systems can help increase the life and durability of your car. Your vehicle’s components are subjected to much less stress over time by limiting how much energy is transferred from bumps and potholes in the road. Therefore, the other components of your car will last longer.

How Does A Car Suspension Work?

A suspension works on the principle of force dissipation which involves converting force into heat thus removing the impact that force would have made. It uses springs, dampers, and struts to achieve this. A spring will hold the energy while a damper will convert it into heat.

The job of a car suspension is to maximize the friction between the tires and the road surface, to provide steering stability with good handling, and ensure the comfort of the passengers.

If a road were perfectly flat, with no irregularities, suspensions wouldn’t be necessary. But roads are far from flat. Even freshly paved highways have subtle imperfections that can interact with the wheels­ of a car.

It’s these imperfections that apply forces to the wheels. According to Newton’s laws of motion, all forces have both magnitude and direction. A bump in the road causes the wheel to move up and down perpendicular to the road surface.

The magnitude, of course, depends on whether the wheel is striking a giant bump or a tiny speck. Either way, the car wheel experiences a vertical acceleration as it passes over an imperfection.

Without an intervening structure, all of the wheel’s vertical energy is transferred to the frame, which moves in the same direction. In such a situation, the wheels can lose contact with the road completely. Then, under the downward force of gravity, the wheels can slam back into the road surface.

What you need is a system that will absorb the energy of the vertically accelerated wheel, allowing the frame and body to ride undisturbed while the wheels follow bumps in the road.

The study of the forces at work on a moving car is called vehicle dynamics, and you need to understand some of these concepts in order to appreciate why a suspension is necessary in the first place.