how does the suspension work in a car?
In: Engineering
Essentially the effectiveness of suspension comes down to two components: the springs and the shock absorbers. Yes there are different ways of attaching a movable wheel to the car’s frame, but let’s gloss over that. For our purposes, assume the wheel and axle are mounted to some kind of hinged arm that allows them to move. The spring provides support between the movable wheel and the body of the car. Now if you only had a spring every time you hit a bump the wheel would move up and over it, but it would inevitable transfer that energy to the body of the car, cause the body of the car to bounce up and down even after the bump has been passed. The shock absorber works to dampen out the bounciness of the spring. This allows the wheel to roll up and down a bump while transferring as little of that bounce to the body of the car as possible. This not only smoothes out the ride for the passenger, but also works to keep even traction on the tires at all times, improving control and safety.
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