Complexity Reduction of Damper Base Valve Design Based on Computational and Experimental Validation

A damper is one of the most important elements in a vehicle suspension system. The damper valves are a fully coupled hydraulic system where the suspension fluid flow interacts with the elastic response of the valve structure. The base valve in the hydraulic damper plays a significant role in compression damping force characteristics of a damper, and therefore designing of the base valve is critical for damping force tuning. In this paper, the impact of the base valve design complexity reduction is quantitatively analyzed. The Current base valve design is restrictive which prevents achieving the required compression damping force ranges without a substantial base valve body parts library. A new base valve assembly is suggested with one more degree of freedom via a restrictor plate. Introducing this new element allows reducing the number of base valve designs for damping performance tuning. The design of the new base valve is engineered from existing designs with the aid of computer aided simulation for improving the tuning range of the damper with reduced number of valve body parts. Finite Element (FE) methods are utilized to evaluate the new base valve structural strength and validated by conducting experimental structural hub crush strength test. For the hydraulic performance of the new base valve design, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations were carried out for meeting damping force requirement. A test flow bench was built to validate the computational models. The new base valve is also a cost-effective solution to meet compression damping force tuning range and resolution.