Yes achieving the levels of damping seen in a discrete traditional damper is going to be very hard but there is a hell of a lot you can do with composite materials to increase and control the damping and the levels that can be achieved vary greatly and it does not have to rely on the overall stiffness of the whole structure.
You need to stop thinking about the whole picture and start thinking on the micro and nano scale at how to dissipate energy at different frequencies. The slow speed damping is going to be the challenge here.
Damping coeffecients:
Steel 0.0004
Aluminium 0.0001
Carbon 0.1
Typical MTB fork 100’s
So yes carbon damps at orders of magnitude greater than steel or aluminium, but we are not talking about high frequency (100s Hz) low amplitude (<1mm) vibration here. When this thing deforms we are talking 10’s of hz at most, and many mm. For critical damping (ie to stop it oscillating, bouncing back more than once) it needs a damping ratio of 0.24-0.4 (crit damping is 1, but that makes suspension feel tto stiff) which with a damping coeefcient of 0.1 means that either the spring should be soft (which compared to a normal fork spring, it will be similar, so not) or sprung mass should be very very light. It isn’t.
But until anyone knows what they have done that is not visible and in the press release it’s completely unfair to say there is no damping.
PS I can read – Chipp’s article said no damping..
if only on a technicality – no moving parts.
Oh, and there’s no compression and rebound damping apart from that inherent in the carbon leaf springs
Look I’m not dissing the fork, it might work well, but it is a technical fact that will not have any damping like a conventional fork.