Development of Suspension Design Technology Applying Principal Elastic Axes

Automobile manufacturers have increased the pace of vehicle development in recent years to respond to diverse market demands. Consequently, it has become crucial for manufacturers to develop new technology which enables a particular vehicle to simultaneously achieve both ride comfort and handling performance at an optimal level. This article introduces the suspension design technology applying the Principal Elastic Axes that has been developed by our company for use in its vehicles. These axes, which consist of three translational and three rotational axes, represent the set of fully decoupled stiffness axes. Applying the Principal Elastic Axes to the suspension reduces the number of design parameters, which enables suspension movements to be considered totally and simply. As a result, design technology was created, capable of optimizing suspension-level compliance characteristics through variation of suspension geometry and bushing stiffness characteristics, more quickly and effectively. The analytical results were subsequently confirmed in actual vehicle tests.