STEERING SYSTEMS: Steering Systems: Steering

principles
Topic

Steering systems

Steering systems are designed according to the use requirements of the vehicle. They can be in single or multi-axle designs. The steering system provides control over direction of travel, good manoeuvrability, smooth recovery from turns, and minimum transmission of road shocks. Rack-and-pinion type steering gears are used because they are compact and lightweight, give sharp steering response, and light operation. The primary components of the rack and pinion steering system are: rubber bellows, pinion, rack, inner ball joint or socket and tie-rod.

Principles of steering

Rack-and-pinion steering

Rack-and-pinion steering system

Principles of steering
The steering system must provide control over the direction of travel of the vehicle; good maneuverability for parking the vehicle; smooth recovery from turns, as the driver releases the steering wheel; and minimum transmission of road shocks from the road surface. The effort by the driver is transferred from the steering wheel, down the steering column, to a steering box. The steering box converts the rotary motion of the steering wheel, to the linear motion needed to steer the vehicle. It also gives the driver a mechanical advantage. The linear motion from the steering box is then transferred by tie-rods, to the steering arms at the front wheels. The tie rods have ball joints that allow steering movement, and movement of the suspension. The steering-arm ball-joints are arranged so that movement in the suspension does not affect steering operation.

Rack and Pinion Steering System

The pinion gear is attached to the steering shaft. When we turn the steering wheel,the gear spins, moving the rack. The tie rod at each end of the rack connects to thesteering arm on the spindle. The rack-and-pinion gear does two things: 1) It converts the rotational motion of the steering wheel into the linear motion needed to turn the wheels. 2) It provides a gear reduction, making it easier to turn the wheels. In this a handle is connected to a series of universal joints to the rackand pinion and the tie rods are connected to the hubs.The rotation of handle is transmitted through series universal joints to the rack andpinion which converts it to the translation motion of tie rods.

STEERING GEOMETRY
Ackermann steering geometry
Ackermann steering geometry is a geometric arrangement of linkages in the steering of acar or other vehicle designed to solve the problem of wheels on the inside and outside of a turn needing to trace out circles of different radius.

Advantages
The intention of Ackermann geometry is to avoid the need for tyres to slip sideways when following the path around a curve, The geometrical solution to this is for all wheels to have their axles arranged as radii of a circle with a common centre point. As the rear wheels are fixed, this centre point must be on a line extended from the rear axle. Intersecting the axes of the front wheels on this line as well requires that the inside front wheel is turned, when steering, through a greater angle than the outside wheel.Rather than the preceding "turntable" steering, where both front wheels turned around a common pivot, each wheel gained its own pivot, close to its own hub. While more complex, this arrangement enhances controllability by avoiding large inputs from road surface variations being applied to the end of a long lever arm, as well as greatly reducing the fore-and-aft travel of the steered wheels

Ackerman vs Antiackerman
1. When you set the negative camber, based on the tyre temperature readings for instance, you are maximising outside tyre grip, at the expense of inside tyre grip. Toe out helps to compensate for negative camber on the inside tyre. This indicates pro-Ackerman might be usefull for cars carrying a lot of negative camber. 2. In using Ackerman steering we hope to be able to influence the slip angle on the inside tyre to our advantage. There will be a range of slip angles where the inside tyre will be producing near maximum grip So we have a degree of flexibility in how much Ackerman we use. 3. To rotate the car on corner entry we are talking about creating increasing drag at the inside tyre. As the cornering force builds the inside tyre must at some point reach it's optimum lateral grip. We then use Ackerman to toe the tyre out further - say increase the slip angle a couple of degrees. The tyre grip doesn't change that much but the longitudinal component of tyre grip, the tyre drag, does increase in line with the increased slip angle. For this to work we would need to know that we have sufficient steering angle to generate the Ackerman needed. 4. If in the process above, we started to loose outside tyre grip, and the driver wound on some more lock, we would have increased drag at the outside tyre. We would then loose the effect. The oversteer torque we were looking for would be overcome by the larger understeer torque. 5. The above indicates that pro-Ackerman would probably not work with low powered cars in fast corners. It might also be a problem generally with heavy cars with spool or locker diffs that might want to push a bit, such as V8 Supercars