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Air springs

With TANIQ’s reinforcement technology you can minimize the wall-thickness and improve your air spring characteristics. TANIQ has the technology to optimize the reinforcement of all types of air spring shapes and has developed a special solution for complex bellow shaped air springs.

Current air springs

Conventional air spring
The challenge in air spring design is to minimize the influence of the reinforced rubber sleeve on the spring behaviour. Therefore, the wall thickness must be made as thin as possible. In some rolling lobe air springs for high segment cars some good progress has been made in this direction. However, for most air-springs used in commercial vehicles and industrial applications the sleeves are still unnecessarily thick. These air springs are generally reinforced with fabric ply, which has two main disadvantages. First, the fibres can not be placed on their optimal positions which results in inefficient fibre loading. Next, this inefficient loading causes shear stresses between the reinforcement layers and rubber layers. Therefore special adhesion systems are required to keep the materials at their relative positions during loading. Both aspects lead to unnecessarily thick constructions, which decrease the spring response and therefore the performance of the air spring.

• Fabric ply leads to inefficient fibre loading
• Fabric ply requires special adhesion systems
• Thick constructions decrease air spring performance

TANIQ air spring with minimized wall thickness

TANIQ air spring prototype at spring
behavior test set-up
TANIQ can improve the airspring characteristics by optimizing the reinforcement structure so less materials are needed and the wall thickness can be minimized. This can be achieved by guiding the forces through the fibres. This way the fibres can use 100% of their strength and the fibres take up all forces so there are no shear stresses between the rubber and fiber. This eliminates the need for extreme adhesion between the rubber and the fibres and no expensive adhesion systems are required. The results of efficient material usage and the absence of shear stresses are that less reinforcement and rubber materials are needed, so the wall thickness can be minimized. Furthermore, TANIQ places the fibre in such a way that the reinforcement structure support the geometry of the air spring. For a bellow shaped air spring this means that no additional reinforcement rings are necessary to maintain the bellowed shape under internal pressure.

• TANIQ uses 100% of fibre strength to take up the forces
• No shear stresses means no expensive adhesion systems
• Less materials needed so wall-thickness can be minimized
• No additional reinforcement rings needed for bellow shaped air springs

The advantages of the optimized TANIQ design are that the minimal wall thickness results in a cost reduction and improved air spring characteristics. A thinner construction leads to a more flexible sleeve with minimal resistance. This leads to an active and linear spring behavior.

• Improved active linear spring behavior
• Material cost reduction

TANIQ air spring case study

TANIQ has developed a new design for an improved air spring suspension system. After analysis of the current air springs, TANIQ developed an air spring with improved active linear behavior and controlled impact absorption.

TANIQ Air spring case study (pdf)

The TANQ reinforcement technology gives you the possibility to improve your air spring performance and save on material cost. It is the prerequisite for long lasting, flexible and high pressure resistant air springs. TANIQ's Capo™ flange connection enables the efficient transfer of forces between the reinforced sleeve and the connection part.