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Automotive suspension design is an aspect of automotive engineering, concerned with designing the suspension for cars and trucks. Suspension design for other vehicles is similar, though the process may not be as well established.
The process entails
- Selecting appropriate vehicle level targets
- Selecting a system architecture
- Choosing the location of the 'hard points', or theoretical centres of each ball joint or bushing
- Selecting the rates of the bushings
- Analysing the loads in the suspension
- Designing the spring rates
- Designing shock absorber characteristics
- Designing the structure of each component so that it is strong, stiff, light, and cheap
- Analysing the vehicle dynamics of the resulting design
Since the 1990s the use of multibody simulation and finite element software has made this series of tasks more straightforward.