A Multibody Dynamic Analysis of a Motorcycle with a Multilink Front Suspension

The paper describes a novel multilink motorcycle front suspension concept that separates the steering and suspension kinematics, and explores its dynamic behaviour to determine its potential performance improvement over a conventional telescopic fork suspension, or other linkage based designs. The suspension mechanism described in the current paper is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, novel and unused, and presents a number of design advantages. The paper provides a detailed description of the front suspension mechanism, and explores the effect of the mechanism geometry on the overall dynamic behaviour. The pitch centre location and pitch response to braking, the frequency response, and the modal analysis are all considered.