HOW DOES IT WORK?

To find out, we asked Nicholas Dalla Costa, performance engineer at Aprilia…

There is an SCU (Suspension Control Unit) that receives the input parameters from the bike like IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), the ABS, the wheel speed, all the engine parameters, and the preferences set by the rider from the dashboard and all these parameters are combined together with an algorithm within the SCU to control stepper motors inside the forks, shock and steering damper.

These motors adjust the damping in the same way that a screwdriver would in traditional suspension.

ASC (Aprilia Suspension Control) is the system we use to easily adjust the input parameters using the dash and the left-hand switchgear.

There are six pre-set modes within the ASU, three ‘manual’ and three ‘active’ modes.

In manual mode we have pre-set three maps, M1, which is Manual Track optimised for riding on the track; M2 which is Manual Sport optimised for riding on mountain roads and M3, which is Manual Road and is designed to improve comfort in the city and also on the highway.

Inside these three different modes, there are five different customisable parameters, front compression damping, front rebound damping, rear compression damping, rear rebound damping and steering damper adjustment.

In manual mode the suspension works exactly as traditional mechanical suspension – the front rebound and compression damping can be adjusted in a range of one to 31 clicks for forks and shock, and one to 21 in steering damper, one is fully closed, so has the most damping, and 31 (or 21 in the case of the steering damper) is fully open, so it has the least damping.

The semi-active mode works a little bit differently. With the SCU it controls the damping settings automatically and it optimises the bike’s behaviour based on the preferences the rider sets on the dashboard.

There are also three modes in the Active setting, set out similarly to the manual settings with A1, A2 and A3, for track riding, fast road riding, and comfortable highway/ city riding respectively.

In A2 and A3 you will find four customisable parameters, while in A1 you will find six. These are not in clicks but can be adjusted from -5 to +5. Front firmness, rear firmness, brake support, acceleration support, mid corner support and steering damper adjustment.

The default setting in all these modes is 0, positive numbers offer more damping, so are stiffer and with more support, while negative numbers offer less damping.

This system is designed to be more user-friendly, so you can ask for more or less support in a particular area of your ride – we find that a lot of people don’t understand exactly how adding compression or rebound damping will affect the handling of their bike.

So you can ask for more brake support and if you increase the value you will have less dive during the braking phase.

Acceleration and mid corner support will give more stability to the bike during acceleration and cornering, but if you decrease the value, you will have more grip, especially to the rear wheel.

The steering damper is a compromise between steering and stability and it changes its behaviour over 70km/h.