SHOCK DYNAMOMETER: WHERE THE GRAPHS COME FROM
Damper performance is still voodoo to most racers, and theyre scrambling to
learn all they can. A shock dynamometer is the newest line item appearing in all
test and development budgets. The most serious teams have one at the shop
and another one in the trailer. They need a person responsible for the operation
of this equipment and the associated computers, so now a lot of big teams have
a shock guy whos either a full-time employee or an outside consultant whos
there at tests and on race weekends.
Dampers produce a force proportional to the speed of shaft movement. If you
compress a damper slowly, it generates less resistant force than if you move it
faster. As mentioned before, a damper on a race car does several very
important things including providing a tunable feel for the driver during
cornering, controlling wheel travel over road irregularities, and, most important
for a ground-effects car, stabilizing the under wing of the car at optimum ride
height and rake.
Since dampers are a critical component of a race car, they should be tested
periodically to make sure they are working correctly. Also, when a race engineer
finds a damper set-up that makes the car faster under certain conditions at a
certain racetrack, that engineer will want to have dampers set up the same way
the next time the car runs on that or a similar track. As with any critical
component, the race engineer would like to know more about how it works. The
shock dyno is a tool used to test dampers and learn about their behavior.
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
What Is a Shock Dyno
The force vs. shaft speed graphs you see in this article come from data
generated by testing a damper in what is generally known as a shock dyno or
damper dynamometer. This is a machine that compresses and extends a
damper at known speeds and measure the forces produced by the damper. Ill
start out by describing the simplest form of a shock dyno. Figure 1 shows a
frame holding an electric motor with a drive belt and pulleys that spins a crank
attached to the damper shaft through a linear bearing. As the motor spins the
crank, the damper piston moves up and down just like the piston in a cylinder of
an engine. Bolt holes in the crank allow several different stroke lengths.
Different pulley diameters or a variable speed motor give different crank rotation
speeds. The load cell measures the damper force.
Frame
Load Cell
Linear Bearing
Crank
Motor
BDC
BDC
00 Degrees
Degrees
Velocity ==00
Velocity
Mid Stroke
Compression
90 Degrees
Velocity = Max
TDC
180 Degrees
Velocity = 0
Mid Stroke
Rebound
270 Degrees
Velocity = Max
Figure 1
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
Shock Dynamometer
We all know that the speed of a piston connected to a crank varies continuously
as the crank rotates. You might remember from high school math or physics that
this type of motion is called sinusoidal because it varies with the sine of the crank
angle. The piston comes to a stop at bottom dead center (BDC), accelerates to
a maximum speed halfway up the cylinder, and slows down to a stop again at
the top (TDC). If you have a damper attached to a crank, its piston does the
same, and the force generated also varies continuously. We know, however,
that the maximum speed of the piston happens only once per stroke, when the
piston is halfway between top and bottom, and thats also when the damper
generates maximum force. With our simple shock dyno we could change the
crank stroke to vary the maximum shaft speed and/or we could use drive pulleys
of different sizes. However both of these methods are cumbersome and time
consuming during testing. Variable speed AC motors allow easy manipulation of
the crank RPM.
Heres How It Works
You put a damper in the dyno, choose a stroke and RPM, and turn on the motor.
The crank turns and the damper shaft moves up and down until you turn off the
motor. If you know the crank RPM, and the stroke, you can calculate the
maximum damper shaft speed. For example, lets say the crank turns 100 RPM,
and the stroke is I inch. 100 rpm is 1.67 revolutions per second and the length of
I revolution is the circumference of the circle traveled by the crank bolt or Pi
times the stroke. 1.67 x 3.14 x I inches is about 5 inches per second. This is the
maximum speed of the damper piston, and it happens twice each revolution of
the crank, once with the piston going up in compression and once again with the
piston going down in rebound.
If we keep this example really simple and connect the damper directly to a
weighing scale with a circular dial, we can stand there and read the scale pointer
directly. What well see is the pointer cycling from 0 to some maximum bump
force as the shock compresses, returns to 0, and then peaks out again at the
max. rebound force as the piston comes back down. The needle on our scale
goes from plus some number to minus some number as the damper cycles from
compression to rebound and back. We can just write down the numbers at
which the needle peaks as it goes back and forth. A commercially available
shock dyno uses a computer to read the load cell and store the data.
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
Some dampers are set up to give more force in rebound than compression so,
as our simple machine cranks away; we might see the scale peak at 190 pounds
in compression and 250 pounds in rebound. So we know that, at a shaft speed
of 5 inches per second, the damper produces 190 pounds in compression (or
bump) and 250 pounds in rebound. Wed like several data points so we can
draw a curve. If we reduce the crank speed to 50 RPM, and 25 RPM, and also
speed it up to 150, and 200 RPM, this gives us five data points. After we make
these runs and read the scale we can make a table like this:
CRANK
RPM
25
50
100
150
200
MAX SPEED
IN/SEC
1.3
2.6
5.2
7.8
10.4
BUMP FORCE
LBS
75
170
190
220
250
REBOUND FORCE
LBS
50
150
250
350
470
Chart 1
Presented as a force vs. shaft speed graph, it looks like Figure 2. We generated
this data by running the crank at a 1.0 stroke and changing the crank RPM to
give us 5 maximum piston speeds, and we read the bump and rebound forces at
those maximum speeds. Then we made a graph by connecting the dots. If we
want data at higher shaft speeds we need to speed up the crank or lengthen the
stroke. Figure 2 shows us that the shock we tested has a pretty steep rebound
curve while the compression curve starts low, rises quickly, and then levels off.
The real benefit of a machine like this comes when you test all four dampers off
your race car and find out that they all give different readings even though they
are supposed to have the same valving, and youve, hopefully, set them all to the
same external adjustments before you started the test. Some small difference in
readings is OK, but the closer together the better. If youve got the tools and
experience, you can overhaul your shocks and test them again. Maybe youll find
contaminated oil, bad seals, or worn parts. Shocks wear out like any other
mechanism and need to be rebuilt periodically.
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
500
400
Force (pounds)
300
200
100
0
-100 0
10
-200
-300
-400
-500
Velocity (ips)
Figure 2
A shock dyno also allows you to see the effects of external adjustments. If the
data above represents settings in the middle of the range of adjustments, varying
them in increments from full-hard to full-soft will give you curves that show the
effect of those changes. That will happen if your dampers produce changes big
enough to be seen by your machine. If you really are just reading a scale by eye
you might miss some fine points. Thats why people buy dynos instead of
building them
Figure 2 above came from data generated by looking at maximum or peak
velocities. This is called Peak Velocity Pickoff, and thats the way a simple dyno
works. We varied crank speed and the damper stroke to give us peak velocities
in our range of interest.
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
Data from an Entire Cycle
You can get more data from a damper by taking data over a complete cycle of
compression and rebound and graphing that. This is called a Continuous
Velocity Plot, and there are commercially available damper dynamometers that
do this. Figure 1 has notations around the crank for Bottom Dead Center (BDC,0
deg.), Top Dead Center (TDC,180 deg.), and 90/270 degrees. When the crank
pin is at BDC the damper is fully extended. As the crank rotates clockwise its
compressing the shock in the bump direction so that the damper piston
accelerates from a stop to maximum speed at 90 degrees and then slows to a
stop again at TDC. Rotation continues and the piston accelerates in rebound
direction to maximum speed at 270 degrees and slows to a stop again at BDC.
Figure 3 shows force data taken continuously during one revolution of the crank.
Shaft speed in the down direction is positive and compression force is positive.
The bottom part of the curve shows shaft speed and negative force increasing as
the crank goes from TDC (180 deg.) to 270 degrees and then decreasing as the
curve goes back toward zero speed and force at BDC (0 deg.). As rotation
continues, speed goes negative (compression) and force increases to a
maximum at 90 degrees and back to 0 at TDC (180 deg.). The speed and force
data taken to produce a graph like this comes from a velocity sensor and a
strain-gauge load cell. A data acquisition system in a personal computer reads
these sensors 1,000 times a cycle or more. Software processes the data and
displays it in this form.
This can be confusing and you might have to look at this sketch and the graph a
while before it becomes clear. The important point is the force increases with
piston speed. On the lower section of the curve the piston is accelerating where
the curve is headed down and slowing down as the curve swings back up. Its
the same on the top part. The piston speed and damping force increase to a
maximum and then slow again. This is a lot more data than we had when we
just changed crank RPM and looked at the damper force at maximum piston
speed. So why doesnt the damper develop the same force when its slowing
down as it did when it speeded up? Im not certain, myself, but remember youve
got a bunch of oil moving through the washer stacks and bypass paths, and it
has some mass and momentum. Those washer valves do not necessarily close
the same way they open. Also, the fact that the damper piston is always
accelerating, slowing down or speeding up, may have something to do with the
shape of this curve.
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
500
Mid Stroke
90 Degrees
Peak Compression Velocity 375
250
TDC 180 Degrees
Zero Velocity
125
0
-10
-5
BDC 0
Degrees
-125
-250
10
Mid Stroke
270 Degrees
Peak Rebound Velocity
-375
-500
Figure 3
Roehrig Engineering, Inc.
100 Lexington Parkway, Lexington, NC 27295 (800) 735-7265
Fax (336) 956-3870
