|
Well, as one mechanical engineer to another - I think you might be being just a little picky here. It's all in the terms. A "shock absorber", being a damper, alters the natural frequency of the spring-mass system, and thus alters the tendency to oscillation at a particular frequency. This can have a positive effect on the ride, also the handling. Drive a car without "shock absorbers " to experience this. The reason that a heavily loaded car (or truck) "rides" better is that the suspension system - not just the "SA"s - are tuned to an average loading. An empty car has too much damping for the mass and spring rate of the system and will ride "harder". A semi-truck, unloaded, is even worse because the system is designed for a maximum load which may be up to 4 times the mass of the system unloaded. There just ain't a good compromise that isn't very costly. An unloaded semi is tough to drive because the system is so over-damped that the handling goes very bad indeed, and a bob-tailed semi-tractor can be virtually uncontrollable under some circumstances. That's why drivers load partials right onto the axles, to try and get the sprung mass as high as possible. There's more to "ride" than just an air-cushion experience. "Shock absorbers" do have some energy-absorbing characteristics in addition to their damping effect - the action of forcing the oil through a control orifice or orifices does consume some of the impulse energy in the form of heat. The trouble is, it's a "swings and roundabouts" game - the higher the energy absorbtion, the higher the damping effect - generally. So I don't think it's all false advertising - shock absorbers do have some shock-absorbing function, and the name is a carry-over from the original technologies, which were frictional devices which only absorbed shock energy and had little or no damping effect at all. And I'm sure we all know how autos from the 20s and 30s handled. llater, llamas
|
