What’s up, Autopians? Welcome to another edition of Ask an Engineer. This week we’re going to look into a question that has come up about MacPherson strut suspensions — among the simplest, cheapest, and most ubiquitous of front suspensions. Have you ever looked at a MacPherson strut and wondered why the spring is not aligned with the shock?
Look at these pictures of double wishbone suspensions.
Notice how, in the image immediately above, the black spring looks like it’s perfectly centered on the yellow damper. Now look at the MacPherson strut design:
Here you can clearly see that while the top of the spring looks like it’s centered around the damper, the bottom is offset towards the outside of the car. Why is that? Clearly these OEMs have gone through a lot of trouble to make a large bottom spring perch and offset it from the center of the damper. Why would they go through all that effort?
The reason has to do with friction — or stiction — in the damper. In a MacPherson strut, the damper is what keeps the wheel and knuckle from falling over under the weight of the car. If you don’t know what a knuckle is, it’s basically just a big, weirdly-shaped piece of cast aluminum or iron that rotates when you steer, and that carries the wheel and brake — it’s the part on which your suspension acts, as I’ve written before.
Here’s a look:
To stop the wheel and knuckle from falling over, the suspension has to push outward on the knuckle, and the damper is the part of the suspension that does that. Unfortunately, the same force that keeps the knuckle upright causes friction inside the damper.
This effectively locks the damper in place until there is enough force coming vertically up from the road to overcome the friction and force the damper to move. While the damper is locked in place by the friction, all the small forces coming up from the road are transmitted directly into the body of the car because the damper is not able to move and absorb them. These forces hurt ride quality and cause a lot of road noise inside the car.
Here is where the spring force comes from. The weight of the car is sitting on the top of the spring, but the tire sits on the ground at some distance outboard of the spring, shown as the “offset” above. The fact that the top of the spring and the tire are not directly above each other means that there is a moment generated by this offset. This moment causes the sideways force on the damper we talked about above.
So what can we do about this? Friction in the damper is a bad thing so we want to reduce or eliminate it as much as possible. Fortunately there is a way. By mounting the spring at an angle, we can use the force of the spring to push outward on the damper at the same time as it holds up the weight of the car. Here’s how that works.
When the spring is mounted at an angle, part of the spring force is pushing down – the vertical component which holds up the weight of the car – but part of the spring force is also pushing outward – the horizontal component. This horizontal component pushes in the opposite direction to the force caused by the moment we learned about above and helps counteract its effect on the damper. The trick is to pick the angle of the spring so that it holds up the weight of the car and at the same time pushes back against the moment with exactly the right force so that all the friction in the damper is eliminated. There is a very easy way to figure out what this angle should be and the math that gets you there is not all that complicated. Graphically it looks like this.
The centerline of the spring needs to point to an imaginary point created by the intersection of the centerline of the tire and a line going horizontally through the lower ball joint. If you do this then the spring will have a horizontal force component that equals the side-force on the damper created by the overturning moment and the friction in the damper will be eliminated. Notice that the spring is facing an imaginary point. It is NOT facing the lower ball joint although in most cars the difference is likely to be small. Modern cars have lower ball joints that are pretty deep inside the wheels and are close to the tire centerline but there is still a difference.
One last factor to consider. The angle of the spring force will only point to our imaginary point at one suspension position. As soon as the suspension moves up and down, the angle of the spring changes so it is important to pick an appropriate suspension position when setting the spring angle. In most cases this will correspond to the weight of the car with 1 or 2 passengers sitting in the front seats since that is the most common load most cars will be carrying. Under any other load, like a full load of passengers with luggage for instance, the spring angle will not be perfect and there will be some sideload on the damper, but this is unavoidable. Like everything else about cars, you hope you’ve made the best compromise possible. At least the effect of friction will have been minimized as much as possible.
If anyone is interested in learning more or getting into deeper detail, I highly recommend checking out “Race Car Vehicle Dynamics” by Milliken and Milliken. And if you have any other engineering questions, hit me at askanengineer@autopian.com.
My future job is about suspension, and I’m glad to see someone sharing this knowledge. Thank you.
If you install an aftermarket coilover assembly in place of the OE MacPherson strut, I suppose that you just have to live with the friction that is inherent to the design. This is because aftermarket performance coilovers are designed with the springs mounted coaxially with the strut rod.
I was about to ask if that was the case. I was looking at some Ohlins for the Evo to see just that.
Safe to assume that the next article will highlight the importance of properly maintaining sway bar mounting hardware on aging Scion wagons? Sheesh.
wonderful article, just overall excellent explanation of a complicated concept.
But… WHY is David not wearing shoes in that video? that is making me unreasonably stressed about heavy things falling onto my foot.
How do struts last so long? They easily last 100-150,000 miles or more yet they are such an integral suspension part with wear components. Even with a little side load how do they cope?
They don’t.
It’s just that they don’t usually fail spectacularly, and a gradual loss of damping ability is hard to notice.
I don’t know why I read these articles. I never understand them. Not because they aren’t well written I just don’t understand. Perhaps someone could write one on the short bus that I should be riding
Well you see,
The wheels on the bus go round and round
round and round…
on a serious note what didn’t you understand? I’m sure people here would help explain it.
Short version; the spring points at the ball joint. There.
Very cool. I just assumed it was a packaging choice, as having the bottom of the spring centered would [generally] require having narrower frame rails, which would encroach into the engine bay….
But it appears that’s just a convenient side effect.
Great explainer! These deep dives into suspension components are really interesting.
Also David is YOKED.
You would be too if you had to wrench the head off of Jeep inline 6 cylinders as much as he has.
So what cars *don’t* use MacPherson struts up front these days?
I assuming it’s mostly performance cars at this point?
Didn’t even the Accord stop using the double wishbone setup at some point, or am I misremembering that?
It was a big thing for Honda fans when they switched the Civic to McPhersons in 2001. I’d assume they’ve done the same thing with the Accord since then, if not before.
Interesting – I didn’t realize it was that long ago.
I remember how the DWB suspension was such a thing in early Honda advertising…”like a formula one car!” or similar. I bet it was the first time most American consumers had even heard of it (certainly was for me).
McPherson struts on an Accord is actually a,return to the original. Our 77 Accord had McPherson in front and Chapman struts in back. (for reference Chapman struts are McPherson struts used in rear suspension because the first use was the Lotus Elan. The original Audi Quattro and 4000 Quattro
also used Chapman struts because for ease of engineering they used front suspension units with a modified control arm and a short adjustable link in place of the tie rod)
Performance cars and most, if not all, offroady things with an independent front suspension.
Thanks a lot, that was very informative. I had noticed the offset on MacPherson struts before but I assumed it had to do with suspension geometry, controlling camber or toe, something like that. The balancing act is an elegant solution even if it’s not adaptable. I wonder if going around fully loaded or simply loaded contrary to design expectations all the time is a major cause of premature failure for struts?
Awesome! Thanks Huibert, I just learned something and I doubt I would have learned it anywhere else on the internet.
I noticed it and always thought it was some geometric compromise decided by engineers.
Damn it I was right for once. (-;
So, when can you tell me why seat cushions are all higher on the inboard (right on the driver, left on the passenger) side? I’m sure there is a practical reason, but it’s actually annoying as hell, for me at least.
If you are referring to one side bolster being bigger than the other, that is to make it easier to get in and out of the car. Why is it annoying?
I can see why they’d design that for ingress and egress.
My problem with this design is that my Jeep has no dead pedal, so my left leg is resting lower than my right. Between the the higher, thicker inboard bolster and the gas pedal, my hips end up resting in the seat unevenly. It’s pretty uncomfortable.
Edit: I’ve owned many vehicles, and from the 90s onward, it seems to be a consistent feature. I’ve had it in a 2017 Nissan Altima as well, so it’s not just my current Wrangler.
At least with a Jeep a dead pedal install is a 5 minute job.
Makes ingress/egress easier and can be compensated for by bracing your outboard leg against the dead pedal and door panel.
You think that drives you nuts? You possibly haven’t noticed, but if you have a recent-ish car, your seat probably also points towards the vehicle centerline rather than straight at the pedals and dash.
Getting your knees just that little bit farther away from the side of the car improves the crash test rating. Pushes your leg into the bolster, but as you’ve mentioned, they make ’em smaller on the outside.
Very clear explanation of a difficult concept. Well done!
Where are the free body diagrams?
I think those are all on The Anatomian.
Interesting.Clever design is always cool..
I’m happy to say i understood most details straight away. For various reasons i’ll never be an engineer but i’m pleased to understand the concepts
Huh. I noticed this, but never really gave much thought as to why… thanks for the explanation!
Well then…hmm…
So, I’ve been going around for a quarter century thinking the offset was to minimize bump-steer. Thanks for schoolin’ us, Huibert!
Bumpsteer is all in the steering and suspension geometry. In fact, measuring it generally involves removing the spring all together and stroking the suspension through its travel.
A MacPherson strut functions as the upper control arm so it’s placement definitely affects suspension geometry. I imagine they just account for the offset so that they get the desired movement as well as the friction necessary to make the struts work properly.
Mantis, you are correct that the strut forms the upper arm but not the spring that does that. It’s the damper. You can think of a McPherson strut as having an upper arm that is infinitely long and attached at a right angle to the centerline of the damper. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but it’s approximately correct. The spring just provides a force that holds up the car, it doesn’t contribute to the suspension geometry. That’s the job of the damper.
This is even more evident in cars such as the ones built on the Fox platform, which use a McPherson strut with a divorced spring and damper.