No abstract

This paper deals with a new automotive suspension testing methodology. The methodology is based on monitoring of the car body movement by inertial measuring unit after crossing a defined obstacle. The attenuation of all suspensions, which serves as information on the shock absorbers condition, is analyzed from the recorded movement. The relative attenuation is evaluated using standardized differentiation of measured quantities and their exponential envelope. The methodology is based on the TriStar tester. The difference of TriStar is especially a manual excitation and measurement of car body movement for each wheel individually. The proposed methodology is simple and time-saving. Experimental verification on a larger sample of vehicles showed that the methodology can detect a vehicle with a damaged damping system. However, it is not sufficiently exact to accurately determine the condition of individual shock absorber, but it is an affordable price for its cost and simplicity. The methodology will find application wherever it is necessary to find and exclude vehicles with critically low damping from traffic.