All UTV's Magnetic Shocks

[az_amsoil]

Just finished reading through a tech paper and thought I'd share the basics. Very interesting developments in Magnetic Fluid core shocks control. Basically, by utilizing a ferrious fluid inside the shock, the damping and rebound can be adjusted on the fly. This is accomplished by current flowing through very small coils in the shock housing. This paper focused on using fuzzy logic to control the fluid and different algorithms that were used in the control system. The overall effect was real time, fully adjustable damping and rebound over a variety of terrain. This was all military contract stuff, but we all know that it trickles down into the consumer market too.

Delphi also uses this technology (patented fluid of course) in GM vehicles (high end Cadillacs)and Ferrari picked it for the 599 GTB Fiorano. With no internal valves or mechanical parts, this is the future of shocks.

Pretty geeky stuff, but very interesting.

 

[JoeyD23]

so is it like a liquid metal that hardens and softens by increasing and decreasing magnetic levels?

 

[az_amsoil]

Sort of, it is ferrious, meaning it is reactive to magnetic fields...in theory the higher magnetic fleld (or more current flowing through the coils) the liquid would become thicker or stiffer. The opposite is true for less magnetic field. Much like what the valve does in the current shock (limits the amount of fluid transfer)...except in this case you can localize the field effect and have the shock compress with differing rates...My Popular Science mind dreams about being able to share your GPS waypoint information with the shock controller and program different rates into the shocks (all could be different) based upon the particular terrain at that point. One rate for soft sand washes, another for hard pack, another for rocks, ect. Best part is your co-driver can make "valving" adjustments on the fly, so say you blow a tire and use up a spare. Say your spare was keeping the rear from rebounding too much and now that it is jumping up...no worries, soften the rear shock to account for the weight loss!

Sorry I geeked out again! This stuff is facinating to me!

 

[scmo777]

Dam Bob this means avery co driver is going to have to have some sort of engineering degree just to ride. Does sound pretty awesome though.

 

[tatum]

Sort of, it is ferrious, meaning it is reactive to magnetic fields...in theory the higher magnetic fleld (or more current flowing through the coils) the liquid would become thicker or stiffer. The opposite is true for less magnetic field. Much like what the valve does in the current shock (limits the amount of fluid transfer)...except in this case you can localize the field effect and have the shock compress with differing rates...My Popular Science mind dreams about being able to share your GPS waypoint information with the shock controller and program different rates into the shocks (all could be different) based upon the particular terrain at that point. One rate for soft sand washes, another for hard pack, another for rocks, ect. Best part is your co-driver can make "valving" adjustments on the fly, so say you blow a tire and use up a spare. Say your spare was keeping the rear from rebounding too much and now that it is jumping up...no worries, soften the rear shock to account for the weight loss!

Sorry I geeked out again! This stuff is facinating to me!

I believe I watched a show on tv were Rod Millen was developing this and had computors running all the shocks and would adjust auto.matically

 

[CSG]

The ones in the Corvette C6 seem to work very well.