Types of shock absorbers for cars

Hydraulic shock absorbers have a simple design attributed to use of fluids. These fluilds – hydraulic fluids provide a damping effect on impact. The most common design for hydraulic absorbers use a cylinder that contains a piston with various holes in it. This allows the fluid, specialized mechanical oils, to circulate through the holes, which allows the pressure to be adjusted.

On the other hand, you can also find hydraulic shock absorbers with valves. These tend to be more efficient to their hole counterparts. Here the pistons have attached valves instead of holes. And so the oil flows though these valves when pressure is applied. This translates into a smoother and more pleasant drive behind the wheel.

It is a type of shock absorbers that, in addition to oil fluids, can also use gas in the damping. In the case of double-tube shock absorbers, you can find two chambers of different sizes (the large and the small). These chambers also have their corresponding pistons, cylinders and valves setups. Through its mechanism, located mainly in the large chamber, the oil passes from one chamber to another. There are several types of this shock absorber depending on whether they use only oil or oil and gas, the pressurized ones being the ones that only have the oil fluid and the non-pressurized ones the ones that have oil and gas. They are perhaps the most widely used shock absorbers today on most vehicles on the road.

In addition to twin tube shocks, you can also find monotube shocks, which also have two chambers but whose sizes can vary much more. In this case, it would be a system that combines both gas and oil to perform damping.

As the name suggests, these are shock absorbers that can be easily adjusted, which also allows the damping to be adapted to the type of driving and terrain that is going to be traveled. On the one hand, there are those known as hardness-adjustable shock absorbers. These shock absorbers include a small washer that allows you to adjust more or less the passage of oil that is allowed through the holes in the shock absorber. In this way, it is possible to have more or less pressure according to the needs of each case.

On the other hand, the adjustable suspension shock absorbers use a similar system, but they are characterized by adjusting the distance to be achieved between the road and the highest part of the vehicle to a millimeter, which would include both the bodywork and the rest of the vehicle. elements of this part of the car.

Although those mentioned above are the most common and most used shock absorbers in cars today, it is important to bear in mind that shock absorbers with other different types can also be found.

• A good example are the so-called rheological dampers , whose main characteristic element is the incorporation of small metallic compounds with which greater damping resistance is achieved, since they imply a more compact force.
• On the other hand, frequency selective dampers should also be mentioned . In this case, the shock absorbers have a valve that reacts by closing when it receives a certain pressure and that marks the difference between the two piston tubes.