Appeal No. 1996-3507
Application 08/041,209
A. The invention
Appellants' claims are directed to an automotive
suspension system employing front and rear shock absorbers
having electrically controllable damping coefficients which
are set to higher values while the vehicle is in a
substantially stopped condition (i.e., the vehicle speed is
substantially zero) in order to suppress "squatting" of the
vehicle as it accelerates from the substantially stopped
condition.
Referring to Figure 1, each of the four shock absorbers
SA -SA includes a pulse motor 3 for adjusting the angular
1 4
position of an adjusting pin 40 (Fig. 4) to provide continuous
adjustment of the damping characteristic of the shock
absorber. As shown in Figure 6, the damping characteristic
has three regions:
(a) an HS region in which extension (also called
rebounding) of the shock absorber is highly damped while
contraction (also called compression or bounding) is lightly
damped;
(b) an SS region in which both extension and contraction
are lightly damped; and
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