Air suspension characterisation and effectiveness of a variable area orifice

The air spring is one of the components that most affects vehicle comfort. This element usually makes up the main part of the secondary suspension, which introduces both stiffness and damping between the bogie and the car body. Therefore, a deep understanding of this element is necessary in order to study the comfort of a vehicle, the influence of different parameters and the ways to improve it. In this work, the effect of the air spring system on comfort is studied. To accomplish this, a typical pneumatic suspension composition is briefly studied as a first step. Then, the test bench developed to characterise air springs is described, presenting experimental results. Correlation of the results with some theoretical models is also addressed. Afterwards, the effect of the air spring system on comfort is analysed, and finally, improvements from introducing a variable area orifice in the pipe that joints the air spring and the surge reservoir are discussed.