Abstract
This study exposes a mathematical model developed to predict the restoring force produced by a mono-tube shock absorber. The model considers mainly the hydraulic oil flow through orifices and the deformation of the disks-valve on the piston. In both compression and rebound phases, an iterative process was set up in order to determine the restoring force. Simulating alternate excitations, an analysis was then performed for evaluating the influence of the following parameters: disks-valve thickness, orifices diameter, rod diameter and disks-valve pre-load for rebound. The results obtained in the simulation highlight that the variations of the pre-load and of the disks-valve thickness are more influential than the variations of the remaining two parameters.