Technical Note: displacement sensor for a damper

This paper deals with the development of a new optical displacement sensor to measure the relative displacements between the sprung and unsprung masse s of an automobile. The sensor is designed to be placed inside the damper. Prior to the development of the sensor, it was necessary to optically chara cterize several damper oils in various stages of deterioration, to establis h the feasibility of the technique. With this and additional background inf ormation, a prototype was constructed and several tests performed. Both the development of the sensor and the results obtained are presented below.