Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Autobot
... Bose's Acoustic suspension
|
Very interesting - essentially a mcpherson strut setup. This suspension
does use springs (not very visible in the photos as they're torsion springs - as I remember torsion springs are usually linear, which makes sense, given what they're doing). I do think that some kind of spring (metal, air, whatever) makes it a lot easier to support the vehicle without a constant energy drain - and are a good way to store / recover energy. There are certainly non-spring ways to do lots of mechanical things. I got a look at a Lotus F1 electro-valve head prototype, hmmm... ten years ago, maybe more. But a tulip valve requires no force to remain shut. (and, as a BTW, neither of my street bikes has valve springs - both desmos). Anyway, "no springs" makes me think the stuff hotseat is talking about is further "out there" than this.
Quote:
|
The only issue I know of with the linear system is high un-sprung weight.
|
Preaching to the choir - bikes have an amazingly high sprung/unsprung ratio - and the lighter the bike gets the worse it is. According to John Britten (who folks here may or may not have heard of) the reason he came up with a way of making wheels in CF was that the rest of his bike had gotten so light that even with magnesium wheels, his unsprung weight was too high (and he was a whiz with CF, but he wasn't mentioning that part).
Quote:
|
But maybe can be over come using suspension geo.
|
Hmmm... well, even if you relocate something or put it on a bell crank, there's still the effect of mass being added to the unsprung weight. Say, for example, if the Bose system was a rotational motor, so you could just attach it like a torsion spring. The intertia of the rotating part would still act as unsprung mass as it would have to be accelerated every time you move the wheel...