On Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:02:44 -0600, Tim Wescott
wrote:

Kinda oddball question, hoping that someone will know.

I'm almost ready to re-hang my driveway gate - we've been surviving with
a roll of chicken wire for way too long - but before it goes on it needs
a shock absorber to keep it from breaking exactly the way it did before.

(It's a scissors gate, about 120 pounds, 18 feet long and it pivots up
and down on one end. It's counterbalanced on springs, but when an
enthusiastic kid closes it the crash is a thing to behold -- and a thing
to break welds.)

I don't want to cut and try a bazillion different things, and I'm an
engineer so I have the delusion that I can design things from first
principals.

Is there any place I can find engineering data on vehicle shock
absorbers? Not "buy this here shock for that there truck, and get 'em
heavy duty if you want to put two cows in there", but real honest-to-gosh
tables with numbers and other useful things for folks who are blatantly
mis-applying a vehicle shock absorber.

At the least I need things like stroke and mounting data, but something
that gives the damping rate of the thing would be uber-cool. In the
absence of damping rate a vehicle weight / shock chart would be useful,
but it'd be a distant second best.

Stroke and mounting data are obvious (if I can match what's in my truck
I'll be quite happy), but if I had the force vs. velocity curves for a
number of different shocks then I'd know from the get-go if I'm in the
right ball park, and where to put my pivot points, and that sort of thing.


This may help. British Publication

The Shock Absorber Handbook

John C. Dixon, Ph.D, F.I.Mech.E., F.R.Ae.S.

Email (for orders and customer service enquiries):

Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com

ISBN 978-0-470-51020-9 (HB)