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| Future trends in vehicle dynamics | |
June 2007 |
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| Ford Norbert Kessing , vehicle dynamics manager "Our cars need to feel connected to the road, so the suspension can’t be too soft but should absorb any undulations. The feeling of control is important for all segments, but smoothness is more important in the Mondeo, for example.
"The money we put into the suspension goes into optimising each of the components. We have the right suspension architectures for our vehicles. We’ve been using the trailing blade rear suspension concept for more than ten years and it’s given us more time to optimise things like the bushes. "Bushes need some stiffness to give the vehicle a controlled feeling, especially in terms of lateral dynamics for steering and handling, but we’ve learnt with our suppliers how to tune them so they also provide the longitudinal softness we need for bumps in the road. "We have key partners and work closely with our tyre suppliers, but we need the detailed component knowledge in-house. A few years ago we relied more heavily on Tier Ones’ knowledge. It worked, but progress was slower. "We’ve doing a lot of optimisation work on suspension friction in recent years. It’s important for steering precision. We have brought friction levels down as far as it’s wise to go – it gives you an unnatural feeling if you reduce friction too far, so I don’t see any issue with McPherson suspensions. "It may be easier to tune a larger car if you have an electronic system, but if the base suspension is already good, how many customers will see a benefit in the extra cost? "We’re investigating steering technologies, but still favour hydraulic power steering because of its precision and natural feeling. Steering feel is hard to define objectively. We do a lot of pre-studies to understand the dynamic performance, but the subjective evaluation by tuning experts still makes the biggest contribution to the feel. "Electric power steering is harder to tune. You somehow have to reduce its feeling of inertia artificially. We’ve managed this in the system that will go into the next Fiesta though. "We’re investigating torque vectoring. It doesn’t require much additional hardware; it just uses systems already in the car. It’s generally good at reducing understeer and in cars with very heavy powertrains that tends to an issue. We’ll see if we can tune it to the extent we see a customer benefit. I’m pretty positive we can."
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