Nukem said:
I've got some work to do to actually get the rocker suspension working. I followed this little article to run the numbers of what I currently have in CAD, and it wasn't good: https://www.waveydynamics.com/post/rising-rate-suspension
Effective motion ratio was reasonably close to the planned 1:1 around ride height, but fell off (and digressive) once it got near full bump / full droop.
EDIT: holy carp. What a wall of text. I'm leaving it for now, but I will happily delete it if you don't have use for the contents.
I want to admit fervently that I didn't absorb the whole article fully, so keep that in mind as I ask possibly silly questions... Though it felt like he was more concerned with aero platform and balancing rate against increasing downforce than with wheel rate and mechanical grip/balance/predictability.
I'm more accustomed to the "motion ratio" than the "spring leverage ratio" mode of looking at these things, and I think defaulting to 2:1 being 2 units wheel travel to 1 unit spring travel. I thought it was a little odd that he used one when working from the force based side and the other when starting with displacement to work to travel and damper, but maybe that's sensible (or maybe that's just the tip of the iceberg of things I'm missing).
In any case, the thing that's puzzling me is that I don't see any reference to accounting for the motion ratio being squared to get to wheel rate from spring rate. That is, if you take the simplest case of an X mm suspension arm and mount a coilover halfway at 0.5X mm, the motion ratio is 2:1. But the relationship of spring rate to wheel rate for this is 4:1. You have to square the motion ratio to accommodate the double action of the spring having half the leverage AND half the travel of the wheel. So a 1000lb/in spring in that situation would have a wheel rate of 250lb/in. Move the wheel 1" and you compress the spring 0.5". 0.5" on a 1000 lb/in spring is 500lb at the spring perch, which in this case is 250lb at the wheel.
I guess the spring leverage ratio is really just the same relationship from the opposite direction, so you still wind up with having to square 0.5 to get 0.25 which is then "spring rate * leverage ratio² = wheel rate."
With your variable leverage ratio and this bit, it seems like your wheel rate will go from roughly 300 * 0.7² =~ 150lb/in at full droop to 300 * 1.25² =~ 470 lb/in at full bump? Did the 300 lb/in spring recommendation take this into account, or were they based on a 1:1 motion ratio where wheel rate is equal to spring rate?
Are you doing something similar at the front? Seems like the F/R roll stiffness balance is going to vary wildly if the front is closer to constant and the rear is sweeping over those kinds of values.