Ford working on position sensitive dampers for off-road vehicles

Ford is working on position-sensitive dampers to make off-road vehicles like the Bronco Raptor even better, a new patent application shows.

The patent application in question was published by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on May 16, after being filed by Ford at the beginning of the year. An updated position sensitive damper suitable for high-speed off-road is also described.

Position-sensitive damping changes the behavior of the damper in a variety of operating scenarios. You may use 1 damping curve for normal operation and another 1 damping curve when you encounter a jump.This requires a harder damping to keep the vehicle from going down the bottom. They are already used in the F-150Raptor, and the aforementioned Bronco Raptor uses a semi-active damper based on a variant of this concept.

In the document, Ford notes that when driving a series of hoops, continuous cycles of compression and rebound, conventional dampers can achieve resonance.This is an unpleasant sensation that forces the driver to slow down or withstand a lot of vibrations.

To cancel this, Ford's design relies on a secondary damper, essentially an area blocked by an additional piston, creating a separate zone with different characteristics from the body of the damper. This provides a separate tool to reduce resonance and keep the tire more consistent in contact with the terrain.

Position-sensitive damping is already used in Multimatic dynamic suspension spool valve (DSSV) dampers used in off-road races and on Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 and other General Motors off-road trucks.

Multimatic is also related to Ford. It built the GT supercar and led the development of the Mustang GT3 race car and its GTD track car counterpart. However, the company's off-road suspension technology has not been applied to any Ford so far.