All:

Considering the recent: Sarek et. al. strut failures, potential leaking air lines, insistence on tire pressures within specification, and my personal surprise to learn our new Defender utilizes magnetic fluid dampers as part of JLR "Adaptive Dynamics", I re-read this really useful article by autoblog:

https://www.autoblog.com/2021/07/27/...ion-deep-dive/


You’ll see an air line (green) feeding the air bag, and a control wire (red) that goes down the center of the shaft of the damper to regulate the adaptive damping.


I also dug into the development and use of magnetorheological fluid damping and reviewed and read several articles on the fluid damping topic (mostly to learn that the fluid response time is 20 - 25 ms). My general learning here is that the fluid and air bag pressures are always changing (in a synchronized fashion) in a manner to ensure sufficient contact force is maintained between the ground and the tires. Such changing of pressures/stiffness will heat the fluid in the damper and the air in the bags when driving off-road at speed on a rutted / wavy road.

Here are two interesting sites:

https://www.bwigroup.com/magneride-a...ension-system/

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10....87814018778222

My bit of study leads me to suspect that one reason the INSIDER insists we keep our tire pressures within the range of allowed light and heavy loads is to maintain the operating stiffness of the tires (provided by their air pressures) to remain within the range required by the air bag and damper control algorithms which were used to design the vehicle.

I suppose to do otherwise at speed might cause the bag and damper to suffer stiffening "overwork" and thereby operate at excessive temperatures and possibly driving too much stress into the components?

Enjoy !!

 

Fantastic amount of interesting and valuable information. I’ve bookmarked it to read over and over, as it is very technical and loaded with info one can’t find elsewhere. Thanks for passing this along. Recommended reading for all Defender owners.

 

Enjoyed that article. I admit I have been somewhat puzzled looking under my Defender at exactly how the suspension works. Lots of bits I've never seen on other cars.

 

Thank you, Trio, You should include this response for every original post "Thank you for attending my TED talks."