A Study on the Optimal Combination of Leaf and Air Spring for the Suspension

현가장치에서의 공기스프링과 겹판스프링의 최적 조합방법 연구

Many kind of springs are used in the suspension of automotive vehicles and among these the leaf spring and the air spring are included. These two springs have not been generally used together in one suspension, but recently the automotive models which use these two springs together increase. This reason is due to the merit of the combination of two type springs. The merits are two. One is the character of air spring, that is, the natural frequen- cy of system is constant in spite of variable weight. The other is the character of leaf spring, that is, the suspension mechanism is simple. The combination spring is used in medium size and special purpose bus. In this paper, we formulate the condition which the leaf spring must satisfy to be optimal design in the combination spring. And experiment is performed to prove the theory. The results are that the combination spring is better than leaf spring in the ride, and that the purposed theory is good for the combination spring design.