Automotive suspension design process

Automotive suspension design is an aspect of automotive engineering, concerned with designing the suspension for cars and trucks. Suspension design for other vehicles is similar, though the process may not be as well established.

The process entails

Since the 1990s the use of multibody simulation and finite element software has made this series of tasks more straightforward.

A partial list would include:

Once the overall vehicle targets have been identified they can be used to set targets for the two suspensions. For instance, the overall understeer target can be broken down into contributions from each end using a Bundorf analysis.

Typically a vehicle designer is operating within a set of constraints. The suspension architecture selected for each end of the vehicle will have to obey those constraints. For both ends of the car this would include the type of spring, location of the spring, and location of the shock absorbers.

For the front suspension the following need to be considered

For the rear suspension there are many more possible suspension types, in practice.