gambler wrote: ↑16 Mar 2018, 14:20
What is the most effective means of displacing the shock shaft as it enters the shock body? Some shocks have a gas piston some have a gas baggie and some have a remote gas canister.
You omitted "through rod" dampers, though even those have a reservoir to cater for fluid volume changes.
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gambler wrote: ↑16 Mar 2018, 14:20
I guess a better question would be what is the ultimate shock design to achieve good tie down and yet get over the rough sections and gators?
I suspect that there is no single answer to your question...The actual performance of a damper in service depends on many factors both inside the damper, as you suggest, but also on the structure of the vehicle, the way the damper(s) are connected to the vehicle and its tyres. So the first task is to decide how to quantify damper performance so that different damper designs can be "rated".
A damper dynamometer is attractive as an idea, but won't be useful in this exercise because the "impedence" of the dyno is generally quite different from that of a vehicle (crudely, if a damper wants to stop, it can on a vehicle but not on a dyno).
Data gathered during a rig test can be analyzed to provide estimates of work input by the rig, and work dissipated by the dampers & tyres, all as functions of frequency. Arguably the two should balance in a "perfect" set-up.
Just occasionally I get the opportunity to "rig test" a vehicle with two types of damper. The results are often a surprise. In one case, with relatively conventional three way adjustable dampers fitted, only 74 percent of energy input was "accounted" at 10Hz - that rose to 95 percent when Multimatic DSSV dampers were fitted. Both dampers had remote reservoirs and were similar in size. Multimatic DSSV dampers better? Often, but not always....
