The Bentley Continental GT has been praised not just for style and luxury but also for its performance and roadholding
The Kistler RoaDyn system was used measure real life loads on the suspension components and assemblies to allow minimum unsprung mass to be combined with durability.
Under contract to Bentley Motors, MI-Technology, previously Leyland Technical Centre, used the RoaDyn system of in-wheel data acquisition and radio telemetry to collect suspension performance data from tests on a wide variety of road surfaces under different driving conditions.
The wide range of data collected, with different loads, damper settings and wheel/tyre combinations was used to optimise the specification of suspension components and for later use in QA test rigs to confirm component life under realistic operating conditions.
Bentley and mi-Technology chose the Kistler RoaDyn system for its sophisticated packaging and telemetry capability making it equally suitable for use on both the test track and public roads.
MI-Technology's Mike Rushton says: "The RoaDyn system performed faultlessly and because it provides a clean wheel with minimum protrusion, we could make the best use of the available time by driving the Continental GT to and from the test track with the system in place." From the suspension designer's point of view, the ability to use the RoaDyn system with a wide variety of wheel/tyre combinations was a real benefit.
Bentley Motors's suspension designer, Dominic Chawner, explained that being able to measure and understand the effects of different damper settings and wheel types on real life suspension loads allowed the weight of components to be minimised without compromising durability or performance.
In production, using a computer simulation based on the same data for both QA and component life testing ensures that the real life durability of the suspension system matches the design parameters.
