S.
ex offender
There is no such thing as a perfect suspension setup, because it's reactive. Some automotive researchers have experimented with active suspension, but it's unbelievably complex and expensive, and for that reason it was even dropped (and probably banned too) in F1.not trying to grave dig, just thought i would do a search instead of starting a new thread
one for the mech engineers out there
ive been doing heaps of work lately involving excel calculation tables and spring constants and moments and all that fun stuff
has anyone ever thought about making up a table to relate suspension type to rider weight using calculations and moments about the swingarms within a frame?
is there mathematically perfect suspension set-up? can we create this for riders over and over through the use of calculations? i remeber seeing log computers on some of the orange/mojo suspension parts. how were they working out a more efficient system??
any idea's?
Yes plenty of people have thought about optimising suspension setup theoretically. To my knowledge it's never been done very well for mountain bikes because the rider himself is the vast majority of the sprung mass (whereas on a motorbike he's still only 50% on a light bike, and in a car he's usually less than 10%), and the rider moves/deforms a LOT compard to a rigid body.
Check back with me in November or so and I might have some relevant information for you