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Tipper application has always been associated with rough roads and very high payload. This makes suspension design the most complex job as it has to cater for needs ranging from good ride at no load condition to stability of vehicle at fully loaded condition. Bogie suspension being most commonly used brings in maintenance and breakdown issues which is not desirable by the fleet owners, due to the cost and downtime associated with it. Rubber suspension has been looked upon as options due to its ability to not only provide good ride and stability but also to be almost maintenance free. Tandem axle walking beam rubber suspension is thus suitable for tipper application and has started to make its space in Indian market. Suspension design and development includes costly processes in terms of testing. FEA being the most common tool used for component design, requires inputs like forces acting on each component in various directions which is quite complex to predict.

In rubber industry, different techniques are used to enhance durability. This paper gives complete design, development and testing methodology of rubber bush in which pre-compression of rubber is used to enhance rubber bush life. In bogie suspension, axle to torque rod join is critical as it has to transfer lateral and longitudinal load with flexibility. This makes challenging to design joint which need to carry more than 6 ton load and having flexibility of more than 10 degree articulation. In this torque rod to axle joint called as End bush, compressed rubber is used to carry high load with flexibility. Other possible material for bush can be brass bush which able to carry high load however not able to give high flexibility Design and finite element calculations are done to design pre-compression and rubber volume to get desired strength and stiffness to carry required load with flexibility.