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In automobiles, a double wishbone (or upper and lower A-arm) suspension is an independent suspension design using two (occasionally parallel) wishbone-shaped arms to locate the wheel. Each wishbone or arm has two mounting points to the chassis and one joint at the knuckle. The shock absorber and coil spring mount to the wishbones to control vertical movement. Double wishbone designs allow the engineer to carefully control the motion of the wheel throughout suspension travel, controlling such parameters as camber angle,caster angle, toe pattern, roll center height, scrub radius, scuff and more.

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages include that it provides the engineer more free parameters than some other types do. It is fairly easy to work out the effect of moving each joint, so the kinematics of the suspension can be tuned easily and wheel motion can be optimized. It is also easy to work out the loads that different parts will be subjected to which allows more optimized lightweight parts to be designed. They also provide increasing negative camber gain all the way to full jounce travel, unlike the MacPherson strut, which provides negative camber gain only at the beginning of jounce travel and then reverses into positive camber gain at high jounce amounts. The disadvantages are that it may take more space and is slightly more complex than other systems like a MacPherson strut. Due to the increased number of components within the suspension setup it takes much longer to service and is heavier than an equivalent MacPherson design. [edit]Uses The double wishbone suspension was introduced in the 1930s. French carmaker Citron used it since 1934 in their Rosalie and Traction Avant models. Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, [citation needed] Michigan used it on the Packard One-Twenty from 1935. , and advertised it as a safety feature. Prior to the dominance of front wheel drive in the 1980s, many everyday cars used double wishbone front-suspension systems, or a variation on it. Since that time, the MacPherson strut has become almost ubiquitous, as it is simpler and cheaper to manufacture. In most cases, a MacPherson strut requires less space to engineer into a chassis design, and in front-wheel-drive layouts, can allow for more room in the engine bay. A good example of this is observed in the Honda Civic, which changed its front-suspension design from a double wishbone to a MacPherson strut after the year 2000 model. Double wishbones are usually considered to have superior dynamic characteristics as well as loadhandling capabilities, and are still found on higher performance vehicles. Examples of makes in which double wishbones can be found include Alfa Romeo, Pontiac, Honda and Mercedes-Benz. Short long arms suspension, a type of double wishbone suspension, is very common on front suspensions for medium-to-large cars such as the Honda Accord (replaced by MacPherson struts in 2013+ models), Peugeot 407, or Mazda 6/Atenza, and is very common on sports cars and racing cars.It also provide least camber change at bump and rebound condition.

The Mechanical Elements of Double Wishbone Suspensions

A double wishbone is a type of automobile suspension system that has an upper and lower wishbone or A-arm to connect the chassis of the vehicle to the wheel mount.

The Purpose of Suspension in Automobiles:

There are two main problems that would occur if suspension systems were not used in cars. For this case of a car without a suspension system it is assumed that the car has a rigid beam to connect the chassis to the wheel mount. This rigid connection would result in the bumps on the road being transmitted directly into the chassis of the car since there is no "bounce" from the springs that would be found in a normal suspension. This rigid non-spring connection would make for a very uncomfortable ride for the occupants of the vehicle.

The other main problem is that a rigid system deals poorly with body roll. Body roll occurs in the case of the car turning or if one side of the car hits a bump and the other side does not. In contrast to a rigid design Fig. 1 shows how well a double wishbone suspension system deals with body roll (ignore the red line). The bottom of the tires remain parallel to the ground despite the fact that one tire is sitting higher than the other tire. This happens due to the non-rigidness and the geometry of the double wishbone design. In addition the car body levels out and the body roll is gone.

Fig. 1 Frontal view - comparison between a double wishbone suspension and a rigid connection (http://www.autozine.org/technical_school/handling/tech_handling_2.htm#Sus-design)

In the case of a rigid connection the tires are only flat to the ground whenever the body of the car has no roll. When the body of the car rolls the rigid connection to the wheel mounts does not allow for all the tires to remain level to the ground. The bottoms of the two tires shown need to connect to form a straight line at all times due to the rigidity of the system. In Fig.1 it can be seen that when the body rolls either the bottom of the right tire would need to be on the red line or the bottoms of the two tires would need to be angled in such a way that neither tire is flat to the ground. Tires off of the ground has disastrous results because in most cases this will cause the driver to be unable to turn, brake, or accelerate effectively due to the lack of tire grip.

The Principal Mechanical Elements of a Double Wishbone Suspension:

This section describes where the mechanical elements can be found and what the functions of the elements are. The numbering system used in the text corresponds to the Fig.2 numbering system. Any mention of translational or rotational directions is related to the standard tire-axis system which can be found in Fig. 4 on page 4.

1. The larger circular hole to the right side is the location for the wheel to be mounted. This uses a cylindrical thrust bearing that allows the wheel to rotate about the Y axis. Bearings in general use lubricated or roller surfaces combined with certain geometries designed to allow movements or rotations in certain directions and restrict movement or rotations in other directions.

2. The wishbones (simple rigid beams) are connected to the wheel mount with ball joint bearings. The ball joint bearings allow limited rotation about all three axes. This allows the wheels of the car to turn when given steering input.

3. The chassis of the car is connected to the suspension system at the four points at the ends of the two wishbones. This connection uses cylindrical thrust bearings to allow rotation about the X axis only.

4. The smaller arm that is connected to the wheel mount is the steering arm. This connects to the steering system of the car and is used to rotate the wheel mount about the Z axis which then steers the wheels.

5. The spring (red) and the damper (black cylinder underneath the red spring) are combined into one compact unit. These two elements are neither bearings nor rigid beams and can only be examined using a dynamic model of a spring-mass-damper system which is explained on the next page.

Fig. 2 3-D Model of a double wishbone suspension (http://www.carbibles.com/suspension_bible.html)

The Spring - Mass - Damper system:

Rigid members are simple to model. If one end of a rigid beam is pushed one meter forward from the position at which it started then the other end of the beam will also be displaced one meter forward from where that end of the beam started. Springs on the other hand behave differently as their displacement can oscillate. If one end of a spring is moved slowly then the spring will behave like a rigid beam and the other end of the spring will displace by an equal amount. However if the input force begins to oscillate at a higher frequency then the spring begins to behave differently than the rigid beam. More information about this phenomenon can be found by researching vibrational transmissibility.

The damper is a mechanical element that always opposes the movement of the mass. The damper works by using internal viscous forces to dissipate energy from the system depending on how fast the mass is moving. An ideal spring would oscillate back and forth forever if there was no damping in the system. No such ideal spring exists in the real world since all springs have some internal damping, but this internal damping is not enough for many automotive applications.

The blue line in Fig. 3 shows the oscillation of a spring with no damping. This would be undesirable in a car because the car would never stop oscillating after hitting a single bump. The green line more accurately depicts the behavior of a car's suspension system. This green line shows some oscillation but then quickly reaches a steady state value at zero displacement.

Fig. 3 Displacement vs. Time for various spring-mass-damper systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_oscillator)

The Overall Function of the Double Wishbone Suspension:

As the wheels rotate with respect to the Y axis (My rotation) the wheels pull the car in the forward direction (positive X direction) and as the wheels turn (Mz rotation) the car is pulled in the lateral

direction (Y direction). These forces are carried through the rigid wishbone arms and into the chassis through the thrust bearings. The thrust bearings also allow free rotation around the X axis (Mx rotation) which allows the chassis to move up and down (Z direction) relative to the wheel mount. This is what allows the bottom of the wheels to stay flat to the ground plane as seen back in Fig.1. Ball joint bearings allow the wheel mount to be steered by the steering arm. The spring does the important job of carrying the vertical load (Z direction) of the car and the damper dissipates energy from the spring so that the spring will come to rest quicker.

Fig. 4 Mechanics of Pneumatic Tires - Page 8 (http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/19/04713546/0471354619.pdf)

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