Dynamic Load Transfer

In car racing our aim is simple - to drive around the race track in the least possible time, maximising the forces
associated with acceleration, braking and cornering. While we do this, the race car is experiencing forces in all
directions, which result in weight transfer to and from all four tyres in a very complex manner. Race drivers attempt
to build and let go these weight transfers progressively, so as to maximise tyre grip.

The "dynamic load transfer" results in ever changing vertical loadings on the tyres, which are additive (+ or -) to static
load (due to the force of gravity), and aero forces (lift or down force). The tyres only see total vertical load, wherever
it comes from. So all the variables of our car set up, driver inputs and external effects end up as just the one
dynamic vertical load on the tyre. The variations in tyre load are large and significant any way you look at it - raw
numbers or percentage change. In so far as our springs, anti-roll bars and shocks influence weight transfer at any
point in time, it is clear that they work together to produce a single load at each of the tyres..

As race car supension tuners, we are vitally interested in one aspect of dynamic load transfer - the re-distibution of
static loads on the tyres, when the car is in motion.

We could improve the handling performance of our car by changing to a better tyre, taking weight out of the car,
optimising the track, or adding serious amounts of aero dynamic downforce. But these will be fixed pretty much by
the race rules or the designer of our car. So this leaves us the suspension bits to play with, plus whatever aero
adjustment we have.

We only consider chassis movements and forces generated by low speed acceleration of the vehicle mass - the
accelerations of braking, cornering and power application. High speed movements of the wheels, where tyres
momentarily loose grip, or complete loss of grip when the vehicle is sliding, will tend to nullify the effects we are
talking about. However, suspension development is often focussed on allowing the driver to maintain balance in the
face of external upsets - eg rally and speedway often run on very poor surfaces, sometimes road race cars are specially
developed to ride the curbs.

Total Weight Transfer (TWT).

Before we start tweaking the suspension adjustments, we need to recognise that not all the weight transfer goes via
the springs, shocks and anti-roll bars. We'll also get a little insight into what roll centres we might run on our race car.

A certain amount of the weight transfer happens almost immediately as the forces generated by the acceleration of
the vehicle mass feed directly through the suspension links to the tyres. In roll, two such weight transfer are usually
considered - unsprung weight transfer and sprung weight transferred directly through the roll centres. In general,
these weight transfers will be minimised in the design. The greater amount of sprung weight transfer follows, as the
accelerative forces feed through the springs, anti-roll bars and shocks (our major area of interest). Each of the weight
transfers can be calculated as follows:-
Lateral force times lever arm (or moment), divided by the track - all done quite readily within a good suspension
program, such as SusProg3D.

Unsprung weight transfer (WTU): In roll, weight transfer of unsprung weight is seperate for the front and rear
suspensions of the race car. In a good design, it should only be a small component of TWT. But it is clear that a big
change in the proportion of front vs rear unsprung weight will change the balance of the car.

The following weight transfers apply only to the sprung mass of the race car:-
Sprung weight transfer via the roll centres (WTRC): Again, weight transfer is seperate for front and rear. It can be
varied simply by raising or lowering the roll centre relative to the ground. So a ride height adjustment to your race
car, or a roll centre geometry change is a very valid tuning device. Particularly for speedway, where higher roll centres
can work, and off-set roll centres are used. For road racing, roll centres as low as possible (considering other key aims
of the suspension geometry) might be the best way to go.

Sprung weight transfer via the sprung mass (WTS): We should not attempt to calculate this weight transfer
seperately for front and rear. The chassis is a rigid structure which rolls around an axis between the front and rear roll
centres. So the sprung mass weight transfer is based on a mass whose centre is the centre of gravity of the entire
sprung mass, the mean roll centres and mean track. This weight transfer is resisted by the springs, anti-roll bars and
shocks, and forms the basis of the wheel pair stiffness theory we look at below.

So TWT = (WTU-F + WTU-R) + (WTRC-F +WTRC-R) + WTS

where the F & R suffixes represent weight transfers calculated for front and rear seperately.

Key Point - Sprung Weight Transfer

The two main methods of transferring sprung weight, via the roll centres or via the springs, exactly counter balance
each other.

High roll centres leave less weight to be transferred via the springs and vice versa. We want our springs, anti-roll bars
and shocks to work, so we can tune the set up. This means generally low roll centres. If the roll centre was at ground
level, weight transfer directly through the roll centres would be zero, and all the unsprung weight transfer would go
through the springs, anti-roll bars and shocks.

I am indebted to Dennis Jansen, a student in vehicle dynamics, for pointing out the effect of roll centre below ground
level. Now, weight transfer via the roll centres is negative. This means there is a component of weight transfer that
actually goes from the outside wheel to the inside wheel. This weight transfer in reverse would have to help turn in,
but of course, the overly low roll centre could have other, less advantageous effects. In a practical design, a roll centre
a little below ground level would reduce the unsprung weight transfer (there would not actually be any negative
weight transfer overall), and the weight transfer through the springs would be correspondingly increased.

It's interesting to consider "If I run higher roll centres, couldn't I run softer springs for increased tyre compliance (more
grip)?" The problem is you also get more scrub (track change), which is bad for grip, and adds to wheel rate stiffness
in any case. It's a similar argument for excessive anti-squat or anti-dive. The wheel base change is not so much of a
problem, but the increase in wheel rate (reduced tyre compliance) can be bad.

Why Do We Need to Understand Weight Transfer?

There are many we can improve improve mechanical grip, either overall, or for understeer/oversteer balance.

If our car had no suspension and no assymetrical set up, we could use tyre technology, temps and pressures, tyre
stagger, steering and alignment angles, ride height, track changes, wheel width and offset changes, front to rear
weight distribution, centre of gravity changes, differential characteristics and some others. We could think mostly
about tyre grip. We wouldn't really need a comprehensive weight transfer theory.

But if we started to play with static cross weight, or add suspension to our car, our predictions of tyre grip and
resulting effect on understeer/ oversteer balance become more difficult.

At the race track, we are looking at a particular movement of the car. We make a change to the suspension set up.
Tyre loading, and therefore the grip of the tyres, will change. We want to know what the changes to tyre loadings are,
so we can predict the likely change to understeer/oversteer balance.
The suspension set up has another very important role - optimising mechanical tyre grip. We cover the theory briefly
in the next section, so that you can appreciate other set up requirements of the car, and differentiate them from
weight transfer issues.

Mechanical Tyre Grip Theory

Tyre grip depends on the ability of the tyre rubber to interlock with the grain of the road surface. The surface of the
road causes continuous small movements of the suspension, and variation in load on the tyre. For maximum grip, we
need to minimise this variation. Grip increases with suspension pressure. We want to push the tyre into the road
surface harder & longer. The suspension pressure results from the sum of the tyre, spring, and anti-roll bar rates and
shock loading, and could also be influenced by the torsional stiffness of the car.

So we have two competing requirements here. If we run spring rates as soft as possible, the lower suspension
frequency (the suspension moves up and down so many times per second) will allow the tyre to be pressed into the
road longer. But harder spring rates will press the tyre into the road harder. The best solution can be hard to find.
Optimum grip requirements will change with each race car, tyre and road surface. But the trend is to run softer
springs, and reset the shock to maintain the pressure on the tyre.

The shock must also control the rebound of the suspension very accurately so as to reduce the amplitude in these
small displacements of the suspension. It appears that only an expensive racing shock is precise enough to do this
over a race distance. We discuss this further in the shock theory section, and in a yet to be written tyre theory
section.

Describing Chassis and Suspension Movements of the Race Car

When a wheel moves up relative to the chassis platform, we say that wheel is moving in bump. When a wheel moves
down relative to the chassis platform we say that wheel is moving in rebound.

The four modes of chassis and/or suspension movement are:-

Heave: All four wheels move up or down equally.

Pitch: Front wheels move up as rear wheels moves down, or vice versa.
Roll: Chassis leans to one side or the other.
Warp: Diagonal movement. Front axle tilts one way and rear axle tilts
the other way. Note that if all four wheels are on a flat surface,
warp movement is bump and rebound on one diagonal and no
movement of the wheels on the other diagonal.

Note the freedom of movement of the chassis in the vertical plane. There is no fixed pivot to precisely control to roll
or pitch. However, the chassis is precisely controlled in the horizontal plane, which is why we get dynamic load
transfer. This will be obvious to Engineers from their first studies in vector mechanics.

Please take the time to be clear about this point. When weight comes off a wheel the chassis is free to move up,
subject to the position the spring will settle at to support the new weight. Equally, when weight comes onto a wheel,
the chassis is free to move down until the spring supports the new weight. The roll centre moves up and down with
the chassis as required to accomodate the movement of the springs.

This point allows us to develop just about all the important theory relating to weight transfer.

In race car suspension set up, we are interested in all four suspension movements, and some combinations of heave,
pitch, roll and warp. This looks complex, but we can build a viable model to deal with it. Note again that we only deal
with re-distribution of the static weight on the tyres. Forces from dips, rises and bankings in the road, or from aero
downforce can be added later.

We need concepts to help us describe and understand the modes of movement of the chassis and suspension. The
first is wheel stiffness.

Key Point - Wheel Stiffness

We will use wheel stiffness to help us describe the comparative amount and speed of weight transfers for the various
modes of movement.

When one of the wheels move in bump, it will be resisted by the spring and anti-roll bar. The resistance force of the
the spring and anti-roll bar combined gets greater as the wheel moves further ie the force isposition sensitive. We
define this contributor to "stiffness" at that wheel, as the wheel rate. Tyres have a stiffness rate, and contribute to
wheel rate as well. Softer wheel rate allows more movement of the chassis, stiffer wheel rate restricts movement of
the chassis.

Wheel stiffness in rebound is a little more involved. As weight is transferred away from the wheel, the chassis is free
to move upward, subject to the wheel rate. Softer wheel rate will again allow more movement of the chassis, until all
the weight is transferred. Stiffer wheel rate again restricts chassis movement.

We'll refer to the total compliance of the suspension when subject to the force of wheel movement as the wheel
stiffness. Other contributors to wheel stiffness are the suspension geometry, and the shock absorbers moving in
bump or rebound.

The affect of suspension geometry on wheel stiffness is discussed in the footnote to this page - a side issue for now.
However, the shock absorbers' slow speed stiffness is vitally important in our understanding of weight transfer. In
modern race cars, the shock absorbers contribute significantly to wheel stiffness. This is the reason why we
emphasise the role of the spring/anti-roll bar/shock combination throughout this web site.

As we said, wheel rates for springs and roll bars are position sensitive - force increases with compression of the
suspension. The car rolls more with increasing corner speed. This is obvious, but important when you want to add in
the effect of slow speed damping of the shocks. Shocks arevelocity sensitive, so will only add or subtract to wheel
stiffness, when the suspension is moving. The shock force is relatively constant for any given velocity - builds fast as
the suspension starts to move, and drops away quickly as the suspension stops moving. In the section “Shock
Absorber Tuning - Our Model for Tuning for Balance with Shocks”, we build a model for tuning dynamic load transfer
with shocks.

Relative Wheel Pair Stiffness

"Relative stiffness" is our second concept for understanding the distribution of dynamic weight transfer in racing
cars. Wheel pairs transfer weight in proportion to their total wheel stiffness. ie the combined stiffness of the wheel
gaining weight, and the wheel loosing the weight.

Old "distribution of roll stiffness" theory only deals effectively with the roll mode. You know. If we increase the
proportion of front roll resistance the car might understeer, and vice versa for oversteer. But my aim here is to
generalise the discussion, so we can predict the effects of set up changes during all modes of chassis movement, in
any combination, using any of the devices at our disposal to make the changes.

If front wheel pair stiffness is greater than rear wheel pair stiffness, we say the car is front stiff. The idea is to
concisely convey how the stiffnesses of wheel pairs compare.
You can see that a car could be relatively stiff in any combination - front stiff, rear stiff, inside or outside stiff (relative
to the direction the car is turning), or diagonally stiff either way.

The springs and anti-roll bars add to wheel pair stiffness in both bump and rebound.

A softer spring transfers less weight and promotes more movement of the chassis, at that corner, in all four modes of
movement. We are only re-distributing the static weight, so there must be another wheel pair to take up extra weight
transfer.

To highlight the role of the spring in rebound it usefull to think about the weight jackers in a speedway car. If we have
jacked a lot of weight into one of the inside wheels, we could fit a softer spring at that corner, so it would transfer less
weight, hold more weight at that corner. With the car back on the scales, we could even up the static weight a bit.

The anti-roll bar increases wheel stiffness on the inside wheel, but is working in the opposite direction to the spring. If
the anti-roll bar is too stiff relative to the spring, it could limit droop travel, and unload the wheel. This is why we
cannot use too much anti-roll bar on the driven wheels.

It's interesting to think about an asymetrical sway bar set up - shorter lever on one side, longer on the other. Weight
transfer will be the same as for non-asymetrical set up. But wheel rate will increase on the short lever side (less
movement in bump), and decrease on the long lever side (more movement in rebound).

Shock absorbers add to wheel pair stiffness in both bump and rebound.

Unlike springs and anti-roll bars, the shock can have different stiffness in bump and rebound. Makes you think about
the tuning possibilities, doesn't it? Shocks are very important in control of the chassis platform and promoting
mechanical grip of the tyres.

Describing the Weight Transfer

We need a way of visualising weight transfer, so that we can see how how set up changes will contribute to
understeer or oversteer. Our goal is to maximise overall grip, and make the vehicle respond predictably to driver
inputs. We talk about understeer or oversteer (tight or loose) in the various phases of corner entry, mid corner and
corner exit. For instance,we could could loosen the car on entry for better turn in, and tighten it on exit, so the driver
can get the power on earlier.

We want to know what is happening to our car during cornering - turning in and trail braking, steady state, and
accelerating through the apex and out of the corner. The driver feels this as handling balance variation. The car could
understeer more as grip deteriorates mid corner (say if carrying a lot of car speed), and oversteer as grip deteriorates
on exit (say if driver accelerates earlier and/or harder).

Key Point - Dynamic Wedge

Our key concept in dynamic weight transfer is dynamic wedge. Positive wedge, or wedge, is defined as greater inside
percentage weight at the rear, compared to the front. That is, the inside rear wheel weight divided by total rear
weight, expressed as a percentage, is greater than the equivalent calculation for the front wheels. The rear wheels are
more equally loaded than the front wheels. The car will have greater tendency to understeer. Negative wedge is the
opposite - greater inside percentage at the front compared to the rear. The car will have greater tendency to
oversteer.

We are considering the redistribution of the static wheel loads. So the load on all four wheels always equals the static
weight of the vehicle.
For example, if we stiffen the front roll bar and make the car front stiff in roll, the car wedges itself more as it corners
harder - more understeer, tighter. If the car is rear stiff in roll, the car de-wedges itself as it corners harder - more
oversteer, looser. Note the description in dynamic terms.

A usefull quick way to think about wedge is to consider inside weight, at one end of the car or the other. You could say
"I have increased inside rear weight" ie wedged the car (moved the set up in the direction of understeer).
Conceptually, it's easy to follow because the increased inside weight at the rear will improve grip at the rear.
American Race Car Engineers talk about increased or decreased weight across the front of the car. This is equally
valid. By definition, if you have increased inside front weight percentage, you must have decreased rear weight
percentage.

Dynamic Wedge for Roll, Pitch, Warp and Heave

To determine wedge in roll we compare the the stiffness of front and rear wheel pairs. Look at the direction the
weight is moving - outward or inward relative to the corner. Weight will be transferred to or from the inside wheels in
proportion to wheel pair stiffness. Compare inside weight percentages. If the car is front stiff, it will wedge in initial
roll, and de-wedge in roll back. Vice versa for rear stiff.

Consider pitch the same as roll turned through 90 degrees. Now we look at the relative stiffness of left and right
wheel pairs. For road racing, right and left wheel pairs will generally be equally stiff, so pitch,by itself will not wedge
the car.

But our speedway car could be left stiff or right stiff depending on our requirements. Look at the direction of the
weight transfer. Forward for forward pitch (braking), or rearward for rearward pitch (acceleration). The stiffer side
will transfer the greater weight percentage. If the car is outside stiff, the car will wedge in forward pitch and de-
wedge in rearward pitch. If the car is inside stiff, the car will de-wedge in forward pitch and wedge in rearward pitch.

If need be, take time to confirm what is happening here. Try it on a piece of paper. Road racers too. We need it for
shock tuning.

Warp movements seriously wedge or de-wedge the car.

On a narrow road course, accelerating out of a tight corner and over the crown of the road, the inside front and
outside rear will be receiving load, and wheels on the other diagonal unloading. Looking at the directions of weight
transfer across the car, the car is de-wedging, big oversteer. To tune for this we would need to reduce wheel stiffness
at all four corners. We would not want to do this, because we have optimised stiffness for the important roll and
pitch modes. So our driver would have to make the best of it. He could enter the corner a little earlier. On exit, use
the crown to help turn the car before full acceleration. If there is enough road on the exit, he could try entering the
corner very late, get most of the cornering done, accelerate hard off the apex and balance the car on the throttle
going over the crown in the road. With the late turn in, he might leave the door open for an inside pass. But the car
inside could get caught with oversteer going over the crown, leaving our driver a perfect opportunity for a switch back
re-passing move.

Warp movements on a flat surface become pure weight transfer between diagonally opposite wheels. We can
analyse these as a combination of pitch and roll.

Heave movements will not wedge the car. But combination roll and heave will.

This must be a big part of suspension set up for stadium truck racing, and in rallying. .
Dynamic Wedge in Braking, Cornering and Acceleration - Combination Roll and
Pitch.
This is the "guts" of weight transfer as it applies to race car chassis and suspension tuning.

You can add pitch and roll weight transfers to look at the resulting wedge of the race car.

Read the section on “Race Car Weight Transfer and Handling Examples for Suspension Set Up, Development, Tuning
and Testing”,and see how the driver inputs of braking, cornering and acceleration have a massive affect on wedge,
and therefore car balance. If the discussion has made sense so far, it is definitely worth a look.

Notes:

1. In suspension tuning for weight transfer, we can look at changes to springs, anti-roll bars and shocks, height of
front and rear roll centres, and possibly anti-dive and anti-squat. See section ”Shock Absorber Tuning - Our Model for
Tuning for Balance with Shocks” for shocks.
2. We must know the directions of weight transfer in the vehicle to make a correct analysis. So the driver and race
engineer must be clear about the movement of the car they are influencing. If the driver changes his style, the
movement might be different. Any change unrelated to a particular movement will only be guess work. A change for
one movement of the car means changes for other movements of the car, for better or worse. The set up is an un-
ending compromise.
3. Wheel stiffness affects the speed at which wedge or de-wedge occurs during transitions. Particularly important for
shock tuning.
4. We can analyse all asymetrical set ups for speedway, and we need the same theory for road racing, to analyse
handling transitions.
5. If we had high level data acquisistion, we could carry out a detailed analysis to optimise the weight transfer in the
areas where the driver had problems.
6. We need chassis and suspension components stiff enough and the operation of the suspension smooth, so the
intended weight transfers can take place.

Shock Absorbers and Dynamic Wedge.

Dynamic wedge helps us to consider the effects of shock absorber changes. As indicated earlier in this article, shocks
are velocity sensitive ie they only affect wheel stiffness while the suspension is moving. To affect handling balance,
we only consider low speed damping, say around 0 to 2 inches/sec. The feature of the low speed damping is that it
comes on straight away and stays fairly constant (controlled by a port in the shock piston)- not building like the anti-
roll bar load. So playing with low speed damping might have quite a nice effect on transients - eg initial turn in, and
feeding the power in for corner exit. If we make low speed damping more rear stiff, we could de-wedge the car on
corner entry, and increase wedge for corner exit. For a description of this, read the section “Race Car Shock
Absorbers - Suspension Tuning, Set Up, Handling”

Tyre Loading and Co-Efficient of Friction - The Reason Why Wedge Allows Us to Balance Handling Characteristics.

For a given size of tyre contact patch, the amount of cornering force it can generate depends on the vertical load (or
weight on the tyre) and the co-efficient of friction (ie "sticky" tyres are better). As we increase the load on the tyre, it
turns out that the the relationship between vertical load and force that can be applied before slippage occurs is not
linear. This is because the co-efficient changes with the vertical load applied. In particular, if you apply twice the load
to the tyre, you do not get twice the cornering force.
The significance of this is crucial to our understanding of vehicle dynamics:

Two tyres equally loaded will always generate more cornering force than two tyres carrying the same weight,
unequally distributed between them.

So it is evident that weight transfer hurts grip in cornering and braking - we would like to have tyres equally loaded.
Weight transfer to the rear of the car will help grip for acceleration though.

Weight transfer will happen, and there is little we can do about it. But we can apportion weight transfer between
wheel pairs pretty much as we like, so that we can balance the car.

Where's Total Weight Transfer Come From?

I've left this last, because it is so disarmingly simple that it can appear to diminish the importance of suspension
tuning. Of course, your car must be designed to maximise grip, within the restrictions of your class of racing. But if
you are not winning races, you can be sure the drivers that are winning, have got cars that do a lot of things a little bit
better than yours - drivability and response that comes from suspension tuning.

In roll, the cornering force, generated horizontally at the tyre contact patches, can be represented by a single
cenripetal force at ground level. The opposing inertial reaction (or centrifugal) force is what we feel when sitting inside
the motor car, and can be represented by a single force acting at the centre of gravity.

These horizontal centripetal/centrifugal forces generate a roll moment, outward from the centre of the corner, with a
lever arm equal to the height of the centre of gravity from the ground.

This moment acts through the body, suspension and tyres and finally shows up as weight transfer at the tyre contact
patches (as we have discussed from the beginning). In steady state cornering, the vertical forces (vertical force
couple) generate a moment equal to the weight transfered times the track of the vehicle (the measurement between
the two contact patches).

So you can see that the total amount of weight transferred in roll is dictated by only three things:
1. Cornering force (go faster, and you transfer more weight)
2. The height of the centre of gravity
3. Track width

Any other affects you can dream up have only a miniscule effect on weight transfer - less than 2% for a race car eg
horizontal movement of the CG in roll.

In particular, total weight transfer in steady state does not depend on:
Your springs and shocks. (Go Karts have no springs, yet transfer weight like crazy.)
Your anti-roll bars.
Your amount of body roll in the corners.

Importantly....
We can tune the car to (as detailed in page 1.):-
1. Apportion weight transfer between wheel pairs. The stiffer wheel pair transfers a greater percentage of the total
weight transfer.
2. Control the timing of weight movements - the response of the race car. This is very, very important (as discussed in
detail throughout this web site). The weight transfer is constantly changing as we traverse the race track. The stiffer
wheel pair not only transfers more weight, but transfers weight faster, so that we have inumerable possible
combinations of spring, antiroll bar and shock settings to produce any one desired effect. Note that we can also
change front and rear wheel pair stiffness by changing roll centre heights.

Total weight transfer in pitch can be considered the same as roll, turned through 90 degrees. It is dictated by three
things:

1. Braking force, or acceleration force, generated at the tyres.

2. The height of the centre of gravity.
3. Wheel base.

For pitch, stiffness distribution still applies, except this time we consider the relative stiffness between RH and LH
wheel pairs. We can wedge or de-wedge the car under braking or acceleration. This is a key tuning aid for speedway,
but generally undesirable for road racing. So we not only run the same springs and shock settings RH and LH sides,
but spend considerable time on the weight scales getting the car "square". But for shock tuning, we can use what are
effectively assymetrical set ups.

Some Conclusions
Unfortunately, total weight transfer reduces cornering power (what a shame).

Wider track will always increase cornering power, a reason to resrict it in many classes of racing.

Low centre of gravity will always help cornering power on smooth bitumen. Not always the case for speedway cars.
Some times they move the CG up, to create more roll. The resulting positive camber change can cut the outside edges
of the tyres into the dirt, for more grip. Note that weight transfer is NOT a factor in why they do this!

We can influence balance by moving the CG forward or back (changing the front vs rear weight distribution).

Interestingly, your inside wheels ARE very important when cornering, up to the point where you are going so fast
you're up on two wheels.

Remember when you might throw a couple of cement bags in the back of the old ute to improve handling? The extra
weight on the tyres will improve grip for cornering - but at a cost. The extra mass of the cement bags must be
accelerated, and de-accelerated (braking) constantly, to the overall detriment of performance, and extra cost in fuel
consumption. The lighter vehicle will also corner faster, because even at a constant speed in the corner, you are still
accelerating the mass to make it go round the curve.

Race car teams will never add mass to the car to improve cornering. They will adjust the set up of the car to take best
advantage of the minimum practical mass of the car (or minimum allowed by the rules.)

So how can you add weight to the tyres to improve grip? The answer, of course, is aerodynamic down-force. The
downside is aerodynamic drag. But we only have to look at any form of motor racing where aero aids are allowed to
see that the trade off is worth it - we get considerable improvement in overall car speed (lap times). In some
categories, race teams spend easily as much time and money to gain aero advantage, as they do an engine advantage
(and probably a lot more.) The whole chassis and suspension is designed around what downforce can be achieved.
There are a a few articles on the net about race car aerodynamics - see insideracingtechnology.com technical section.

Formula Ford is one of the few national categories where aero aids are not allowed. Also engine output is restricted.
So the aim of FF car designers is to run at the minimum allowed weight, reduce aero drag, and maximise mechanical
grip.

The same criteria apply to nearly all amateur racing, short track speedway, and rallying.

For performance road cars, there is little advantage in aero downforce. It seems that after-market aero kits don't
work. (Track tests have been done to confirm this. How could you get the ride height and the front splitter low
enough?)

It is interesting to consider the new sports cars recently released - the Celica and MR2 Toyotas, and the Honda S2000
and Intergra R. They have gone all out to reduce weight (yet still retain a stiff chassis). The engines produce more
power (naturally aspirated) by designing for much higher rpm than previously. If they could get any usefull downforce,
they'd have aero kits. It is true, however, that some performance cars, such as the Audi TT, have rear spoilers to
reduce rear lift at very high speed.

There is more to handling than weight transfer. We can find more factors by consider movements of the race car
in yaw - rotation about the vertical axis.

In our discussion of weight transfer, we explored the ever changing loading and unloading of the tyres, and
movements of the race car around axes in the horizontal plane - roll, pitch and warp.

Rotations of the Race Car about the Yaw Axis

For a race car to be cornering in steady state neutral steer, we can
consider the centrifugal force, acting at the centre of gravity, to be
balanced by the cornering forces of the front and rear tyres.

If front cornering force was to be reduced, we say the car understeers,

and if rear cornering force reduces, we say the car oversteers.

This is the intuitive model that most of us start with, when we first
consider vehicle dynamics.

So it appears not unreasonable, that the resultant cornering forces at

the tyres, should have a turning torque around a vertical axis through
the centre of gravity - the yaw axis.

As this is a race car, we are talking optimum performance - we want

to use all the available tyre force. From our knowledge of weight
transfer, we know that tyre loading determines the size of that force.
And that force can be in any direction, depending on the combination
of braking, cornering or acceleration. To help in our thoughts on
setting up race cars, it is usefull to consider all the components of those
forces, and their contribution to oversteer or understeer torque around the centre of gravity.

Best way to do this is to look at an analysis done by Paul Van

Valkenburg in his book Race Car Engineering & Mechanics 1992, page
74. His calculations are for a typical mid-engined 1600 lb race car.
The results are plotted graphically, with total rear tyre thrust on the X
axis, and turning torque around the CG on the Y axis. The two
directions of rotation are shown as, up for oversteer and down for understeer.

Some of the factors contributing to understeer stay fairly constant

with increasing rear tyre thrust. These are front tyre drag and reduced
co-efficient of friction on front tyres (front tyres smaller on this car).
Our set up is front stiff, so we build some increasing wedge (understeer)
with increasing cornering force from the thrust of the rear tyres.

Most interesting to me is what he shows happening with front to rear

load transfer. Both increased rear tyre load and reduced front tyre load
contribute to understeer in a big way - more at the front than back, and
a lot more than the lateral load transfer alone. See my example on “Race Car Weight Transfer and Handling
Examples for Suspension Set Up for acceleration while cornering” - it shows part of this effect.

The two contributors to oversteer are - cornering traction loss, because

the rear tyres are being used up with increasing thrust, and the locked
axle oversteer effect (this car has a locker, rather than a limited slip
diff).

But it is the net torque around the CG, that produces actual understeer
or oversteer. The car in Paul's calculations, has quite a bit of throttle
off understeer. To maintain a constant speed in the corner it needs
about 300 lbs of rear tyre thrust. From 500 lbs to about 1200 lbs of
thrust it has quite a nice flat area in the net torque curve, representing
steady light understeer, almost neutral steer, which the driver would
experience as balanced and requiring very little steering input. The
cornering traction loss really starts to rise fast from 1200 lbs onwards,
and the handling balance quickly moves into oversteer at about 1500
lbs. The locked rear axle effect has been fairly constant up to this
point, but now really comes into play as inside rear tyre capability is
used up. Increased thrust after this point goes into the outside tyre, causing oversteer torque on the CG.

So lets look at some conclusions:

1. There is no such thing as an all understeering or all oversteering race
car. It depends entirely on how it is being driven. In testing, we need
both driver and race engineer to be very clear about what is happening,
and where in the corner phase, before we attempt to improve the set up
of the race car.

2. Before we do any serious tuning, we need the car balanced in the

mid-corner steady state phase, with just the right amount of mild understeer, that leaves room for the coming
increase of rear tyre thrust on corner exit.
We probably then need to improve overall grip using tyre temperature
checks to assess the correct dynamic camber, change the static cambers to suit, assess the best working pressures for
the tyres, and check that tyre
temps are in a good operating range. Then re-balance the car again,
because it has probably changed!
3. If we had a powerfull car with a limited slip diff, it would provide
tuning possibilities. If we have a locker, we need to tune around it's
known performance characteristics, as in V8 Supercars for instance.

4. If we were to add suitable aerodynamic downforce, the tyres would

have a lot more traction in fast corners. So the cornering traction loss
curve would remain flatter, and the steeply increasing increasing
oversteer torque from this effect would be delayed much longer.
Also, inside rear tyre would not get used up, so locked axle curve would
stay flat too. Result - cornering speed much faster.

5. We should not use downforce to solve a handling problem. If we

just added wing to a poor chassis set-up, we would give away heaps
of potential performance. Set up for mechanical grip and balance first,
then optimise downforce. Of course, we must be applying a baseline
set up for downforce the whole time, because a big increase in downforce
might change the ride height of the car sufficiently for the suspension
geometry to change the balance of the car.

6. The transient effects we have been looking at are so important to

quick lap times. The driver must be able to use up all the available
traction of the tyres as often as possible. The responses of the car
must be as linear as possible - no sudden surprises. So drivability
is more important than ultimate grip.

7. Data acquisition systems, as commonly available to non-professional

teams, will not be able to break down your set up problem into all the
effects you need to consider. We still have to use our own knowledge
and judgement to decide what changes to test. Paul Haney has
interviewed some race car engineers. They seem to be saying that data
helps with most set up problems, but that the driver is the best sensor
we have for determining balance.

A Comprehensive View of Race Vehicle Dynamics

For professional race teams, data acquisition has a allowed a more detailed
analysis of what is happening with race car set up than what we have discussed here. A Race Car Engineer, Claude
Rouelle, has been presenting seminars showing how Pi Research data acquisition might be used to address set up
problems.

Instead of just one centre of gravity (or more correctly, centre of mass), he shows how to calculate two - centre of
mass for the sprung mass and unsprung mass seperately.

Rouelle differentiates between "elastic weight transfer" and "geometric weight transfer." Geometric forces go
through the suspension links into the chassis as soon as tire forces begin. Because the instantaneous center of
rotation of the suspension is probably below the center of mass there is a roll moment that wants to rotate the
chassis about that center of rotation. The springs and dampers control the timing of those "elastic" forces, but they
build up after the start of the geometric forces. Rouelle shows how to calculate all these forces
using the data acquisition.
You can read Paul Haney's article and interview with Claude Rouelle in the section “Racecar Dynamics and Data
Acquisition Training Seminar”

Suspension Geometry and Wheel Alignment.

We have re-printed a good article from Grass Roots Magazine:
“Pointed the Right Way “
Further Reading on Vehicle Dynamics.
(It helps to read someone else's view, to formalise your own understanding of the basics.)

For my own understanding I am indebted to the brilliant articles by Mark Oritz writing in "Race Car Engineering", and
Paul Haney's book, "Inside Racing Technology". The interviews with Engineers and Team Owners are great.

Visit autospeed.com for great articles on performance cars:

We link to Autospeed elsewhere on this site to interesting articles on supension development.

Read "The Physics of Motorsport" by Richard Bowen, a lecturer at Durham

University: http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dph0rgb/PoM/pom/pom.html
As Richard says at the outset, this is a simplified view of vehicle dynamics. It only takes a few minutes to click through
his article. There are equations, and his conclusions are spot on.

"The Trans Am & Corvette Chassis" articles on handling theory:

http://members.aol.com/sccacuda/cars/CSmthTa.html
There is quite a lot here, some good explanations, especially on tires and tyre temp readings. These articles
are for speedway. So not all is relevant to road racing.

The acclaimed "Physics of Racing" Series, by Brian Beckman:

http://www.miata.net/sport/Physics/index.html
Too many equations for me. Also, if the maths gets too complex to include in the article, Brian does not cover
some important areas, e.g. combination pitch and roll.

"Weight Transfer": http:www.//rc-racing.com/docs/1997/aug/Weight-Transfer.html

Very good stuff. And the're racing radio controlled cars! You better just hope they don't move into your series.

eibach.com
Go to the Suspension index and they have a glossary of terms related to vehicle dynamics topics.

The Shock Articles (if you havn't read them on the way through).

A "Mindset" for Analysing Suspension Set Up Problems

Bringing all the concepts together.

Smithees can help with all race car setup problems, contact us

Footnote:
In pitch, anti-dive and anti-squat suspension geometry add to wheel pair stiffness.

In roll, any change in track dimension (track variation, or tyre scrub), resulting from the design of the suspension
geometry adds to wheel stiffness. The affect on tyre grip is all bad. In modern formula race car design, tyre scrub is
reduced to a minimum, at the expense of other design criteria, such as optimising camber curves. In older designs, we
live with it.