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Automobile Engineering Experiment 10: Study of Camber, Caster, Toe-In or Toe-Out Camber

The document discusses different wheel alignment angles and their effects: - Camber is the tilt of the wheel relative to vertical and affects cornering force, with small negative camber providing maximum force. Proper camber is determined by tire temperature distribution after driving. - Caster is the tilt of the steering axis and positive caster enhances straight-line stability by self-centering the wheels. It also causes wheels to gain camber in turns, which aids cornering. - Toe, whether the front wheels are angled in (toe-in) or out (toe-out) affects tire wear, straight-line stability, and corner entry handling.

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sai Chaitanya
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131 views4 pages

Automobile Engineering Experiment 10: Study of Camber, Caster, Toe-In or Toe-Out Camber

The document discusses different wheel alignment angles and their effects: - Camber is the tilt of the wheel relative to vertical and affects cornering force, with small negative camber providing maximum force. Proper camber is determined by tire temperature distribution after driving. - Caster is the tilt of the steering axis and positive caster enhances straight-line stability by self-centering the wheels. It also causes wheels to gain camber in turns, which aids cornering. - Toe, whether the front wheels are angled in (toe-in) or out (toe-out) affects tire wear, straight-line stability, and corner entry handling.

Uploaded by

sai Chaitanya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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AUTOMOBILE ENGINEERING

Experiment 10
Study of camber, caster, toe-in or toe-out

Camber
Camber is the angle of the wheel relative to vertical, as viewed from the front or the rear of the car.
If the wheel leans in towards the chassis, it has negative camber; if it leans away from the car, it has
positive camber (see next page). The cornering force that a tyre can develop is highly dependent on
its angle relative to the road surface, and so wheel camber has a major effect on the road holding of
a car. It's interesting to note that a tyre develops its maximum cornering force at a small negative
camber angle, typically around neg. 1/2 degree. This fact is due to the contribution of camber
thrust, which is an additional lateral force generated by elastic deformation as the tread rubber
pulls through the tyre/road interface (the contact patch).
It's important to draw the distinction between camber relative to the road, and camber relative to
the chassis. To maintain the ideal camber relative to the road, the suspension must be designed so
that wheel camber relative to the chassis becomes increasingly negative as the suspension deflects
upward. Since most independent suspensions are designed so that the camber varies as the wheel
moves up and down relative to the chassis, the camber angle that we set when we align the car is
not typically what is seen when the car is in a corner. Nevertheless, it's really the only reference we
have to make camber adjustments. For competition, it's necessary to set the camber under the static
condition, test the car, then alter the static setting in the direction that is indicated by the test
results.

The best way to determine the proper camber is to measure the temperature profile across the tyre
tread immediately after completing some hot laps. In general, it's desirable to have the inboard edge
of the tyre slightly hotter than the outboard edge. However, it's far more important to ensure that
the tyre is up to its proper operating temperature than it is to have an "ideal" temperature profile.
Thus, it may be advantageous to run extra negative camber to work the tyres up to temperature.

Caster
Caster is the angle to which the steering pivot axis is tilted forward or rearward from vertical, as
viewed from the side. If the pivot axis is tilted backward (that is, the top pivot is positioned farther
rearward than the bottom pivot), then the caster is positive; if it's tilted forward, then the caster is
negative.

Positive caster tends to straighten the wheel when the vehicle is traveling forward, and thus is used
to enhance straight-line stability. The mechanism that causes this tendency is clearly illustrated by
the castoring front wheels of a shopping cart (above). The steering axis of a shopping cart wheel is
set forward of where the wheel contacts the ground. As the cart is pushed forward, the steering axis
pulls the wheel along, and since the wheel drags along the ground, it falls directly in line behind the
steering axis. The force that causes the wheel to follow the steering axis is proportional to the
distance between the steering axis and the wheel-to-ground contact patch-the greater the distance,
the greater the force. This distance is referred to as "trail."
Due to many design considerations, it is desirable to have the steering axis of a car's wheel right at
the wheel hub. If the steering axis were to be set vertical with this layout, the axis would be
coincident with the tyre contact patch. The trail would be zero, and no castoring would be
generated. The wheel would be essentially free to spin about the patch (actually, the tyre itself
generates a bit of a castoring effect due to a phenomenon known as "pneumatic trail," but this
effect is much smaller than that created by mechanical castoring, so we'll ignore it here).
Fortunately, it is possible to create castoring by tilting the steering axis in the positive direction.
With such an arrangement, the steering axis intersects the ground at a point in front of the tyre
contact patch, and thus the same effect as seen in the shopping cart casters is achieved.
The tilted steering axis has another important effect on suspension geometry. Since the wheel
rotates about a tilted axis, the wheel gains camber as it is turned. This effect is best visualized by
imagining the unrealistically extreme case where the steering axis would be horizontal as the
steering wheel is turned, the road wheel would simply change camber rather than direction. This
effect causes the outside wheel in a turn to gain negative camber, while the inside wheel gains
positive camber. These camber changes are generally favourable for cornering, although it is
possible to overdo it.
Toe-in & Toe-out
When a pair of wheels is set so that their leading edges are pointed slightly towards each other, the
wheel pair is said to have toe-in. If the leading edges point away from each other, the pair is said
to have toe-out. The amount of toe can be expressed in degrees as the angle to which the
wheels are out of parallel, or more commonly, as the difference between the track widths as
measured at the leading and trailing edges of the tyres or wheels. Toe settings affect three major
areas of performance: tyre wear, straight-line stability and corner entry handling characteristics.
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