文档介绍：How Car Suspensions Work
Table of Contents:
› Introduction to How Car Suspensions Work
› Vehicle Dynamics
› The Chassis
› Springs
› Springs: Sprung and Unsprung Mass
› Dampers: Shock Absorbers
› Dampers: Struts and Anti-sway Bars
› Suspension Types: Front
› Suspension Types: Rear
› Specialized Suspensions: The Baja Bug
› Specialized Suspensions: Formula One Racers
› Specialized Suspensions: Hot Rods
› The Future of Car Suspensions
› Lots More Information
› Compare Prices for Car Suspensions
When people think of automobile performance, they normally think of horsepower, torque and zero-to-60 acceleration. But all of the power generated by a piston engine is useless if the driver can't control the car. That's why automobile engineers turned their attention to the suspension system almost as soon as they had mastered the four-stroke bustion engine.
Photo courtesy Honda Motor Co., Ltd.
Double-wishbone suspension on Honda Accord 2005 Coupe
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 to ensure fort of the passengers. In this article, we'll explore how car suspensions work, how they've evolved over the years and where the design of suspensions is headed in the future.
Vehicle Dynamics
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.
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