#!markdown
I feel like this leaves out the most important part of suspension, the spring.
With the correct spring and damping set up the suspended mass is actually
completely irrelevant. The fork can be modeled with the equation mx"+Bx'+kx=0,
where x" is acceleration, x' is velocity, x is displacement of the spring, B
is the damping coefficient, and k is the spring constant. The suspension of a
bike that is ten times heavier would theoretically have the same response if B
and k were also ten times greater.
Long story short, by changing your internals you can get the fork to have very
similar responses regardless of mass (as long as your bikes is a reasonable
weight).
Feb. 5, 2013, 7:31 a.m. - jadavis
#!markdown I feel like this leaves out the most important part of suspension, the spring. With the correct spring and damping set up the suspended mass is actually completely irrelevant. The fork can be modeled with the equation mx"+Bx'+kx=0, where x" is acceleration, x' is velocity, x is displacement of the spring, B is the damping coefficient, and k is the spring constant. The suspension of a bike that is ten times heavier would theoretically have the same response if B and k were also ten times greater. Long story short, by changing your internals you can get the fork to have very similar responses regardless of mass (as long as your bikes is a reasonable weight).