Suspension for Highway driving

[TLeibel]

Is there a any suspension that is more reliable for highway Driving.

I'm designing the suspension for a solar car race across America and am wondering the most reliable suspension for long distances. The race will be on normal highways.

I know most types of suspension A-bar Wishbone MacPerson. Thanks

[curtis73]

Ooh, sounds like a fun project. I'll touch on some topics here, but for the sake of your actual design I suggest you read Milliken's Race Car Vehicle Dynamics. Lots of calculus, but an invaluable reference.

I'm assuming you want to keep weight to an absolute minimum. Its tough to guess not knowing things like wheelbase, weight, and CG, but I'm going to say stay away from double-A arm types. Although they are the most versatile and are capable of incredible things, you need a simple, stable, and lightweight system. Its not that they have to be heavy, but given their design and load vectors, they tend to be heavier for a given setup. On production cars where weight and size can take a back seat to performance, they're great.

There are some other great options that you might try. You can use a torsion bar on the front. The kind I'm suggesting is part of the axle itself and could only be used on the non-powered axle. Its a steel tubular axle with steel torsion bars inside it. They stick out the end of the tube, have a dogleg, then a steering spindle. You can order them through Dune Buggy channels and you can get them with different rate bars, and different length doglegs to tune your rate and caster curve. They fail in cornering performance since they are a fixed camber, but for straight-line highway they should suit well.

You could also design a very lightweight solid axle with trailing arms for the front. It would ride a little harsher than an independent, but not that noticable. Fixed camber and caster but a light and easy way of doing it.

One last idea: take a look at Ford's twin-I-beam front suspensions. They are like two solid axles. The left beam attaches to the right side of the truck and vice versa. They are staggered so they don't hit each other, but they have the advantages of independent suspensions, and the durability of solid axles. I think that might be your ticket.

I'm leaning toward the twin-I-bearm, or the torsion bar axle for the front. The rear you'll have to decide yourself. I don't know how you're doing it... is the power on the axle? In the chassis?

[TLeibel]

Thanks For the Info

it's powered by a single rear wheel so all that info really helps

the rear suspension is still up in the air so i have no idea