Variable caster steering in vehicle dynamics

When a car is cornering, its wheels usually lean away from the centre of rotation. This phenomenon decreases lateral force, limits tyre performance and eventually reduces the vehicle lateral grip capacity. This paper proposes a strategy for varying caster in the front suspension, thereby altering the wheel camber to counteract this outward inclination. The homogeneous transformation was utilised to develop the road steering wheel kinematics which includes the wheel camber with respect to the ground during a cornering manoeuvre. A variable caster scheme was proposed based on the kinematic analysis of the camber. A rollable vehicle model, along with a camber-included tyre force model, was constructed. MATLAB/Simulink was used to simulate the dynamic behaviour of the vehicle with and without the variable caster scheme. The results from step steer, ramp steer, and sinusoidal steer inputs simulations show that the outward leaning phenomenon of the steering wheels equipped with the variable caster, is reduced significantly. The corresponding lateral acceleration and yaw rate increase without compromising other handling characteristics. The actively controlled car, therefore, provides better lateral stability compared to the passive car. The tyre kinematic model and the vehicle dynamic model were validated using multibody and experimental data. © IMechE 2017.