Development of a Low-Cost Vibration Damper Dynamometer for Suspension Damper Testing

Abstract

On performance vehicles, suspension dampers are used to reduce the vibration produced by variations in the driving surface, while simultaneously controlling the rate of load transfer between tires during lateral and longitudinal acceleration. To measure the characteristics of suspension dampers, a damper dynamometer is typically used to compress and elongate the dampers at a known speed, and then measure the force output. However, a commercial damper dynamometer is usually expensive and not always suitable for the dampers specifically designed for a customized vehicle. In this chapter, a cheap, customized, and effective damper dynamometer is constructed through computer-aided design, finite element analysis, and manufacture to measure the properties of suspension dampers used in a racecar. It was demonstrated through data analysis that this designed damper dynamometer can produce usable measurement data for a far lower cost than other methods.