Suspension.

The suspension design requirements were

control of wheel attitude with respect to the ground, low
cost, ease of manufacture (both suspension and
chassis) and adjustable steady state and transient
handling balance. A review of suspension concepts led
to the selection of beam axles as providing the best
wheel attitude control in all vehicle acceleration modes
(on smooth surfaces). Beam axles also offered the
benefits of a low number of parts and a low number of
chassis pick up points. These benefits were traded off
against high unsprung mass and single wheel bumps
affecting both sides of the vehicle through gyroscopic
procession and camber change. To offset the relatively
high unsprung mass and reduce the impacts of
gyroscopic precession during single wheel bump, 10
inch wheels were specified. The wheel choice made
upright packaging design challenging, particularly using
brakes on the inboard side of the upright to obtain zero
steering axis inclination while maintaining a small scrub
radius of 17mm (for reduced moment about the front
and rear steering axes). The uprights were designed in
an attempt to reduce both camber and toe compliance
by separating the pickups as far as possible to
counteract the steering axis moments generated by
contact patch forces and moments. The separation of
upright pickups also aided the brake system design
requirements of thermal capacity and system stiffness
by allowing the brake disc diameter to be maximised
within the spatial constraints. The front and rear uprights
share the same basic architecture with differences for
steering and toe links; the front upright design loads
drove the component sizing down to the limits of
machinability at 2mm thickness for internal webs. The
uprights were chosen to be machined for dimensional

accuracy and to spread manufacture between

fabrication and machining. To reduce machine time the
uprights were designed for prismatic machining requiring
only two set ups. A four stud wheel centre hub interface
was chosen over a centre lock type to allow use of
purchased wheel nuts and reduce machining
requirements. The wheels have a very large offset of 46mm to reduce scrub radius and therefore required the
steering linkage design to incorporate an idler bell crank
for packaging purposes and to ensure that the desired
steering kinematics could be obtained. The steering
kinematics (dynamic toe) can be altered by using
substitute steering arms.
The front and rear beam axles require only four and
six chassis pick up points respectively as opposed to 12
for double A-arm suspension with push or pull rods
(neglecting steering rack/toe link mountings for both).
The direct acting dampers restrict design freedom on
motion ratio but reduce the parts count and simplify the
design. The front beam axle uses a vertically aligned
peg and slot (ball bearing on chassis with slot on beam)
for lateral kinematic control and trailing arms converging
to a single spherical bearing which allows roll, pitch and
heave. The steering rack is mounted to the beam axle
which increases unsprung mass but allows reduced
bump steer by placing the lower steering column
universal joint as close as possible to the roll axis. The
steering column utilises two universal joints and a
telescopic spline to accommodate pitch and heave.
The rear beam axle uses trailing arms with two
spherical mounts and a Watts linkage for lateral
kinematic control. To allow the beam to be kinematically
free in roll it required either a rotating coupling in the
centre or the simpler, chosen method of utilising a

torsionally flexible member. By cutting a slot down the

centre of the rear beam tube it becomes torsionally
flexible requiring a force couple of approximately 20N at
the wheel centres to move through four degrees of roll.
The rear beam can be described as a de Dion twist axle.
The de Dion configuration was chosen over a live axle to
allow the use of a limited slip differential and offset the
associated higher unsprung mass. In the front
suspension, caster is used to provide increased
negative camber with turn angle, whereas the rear beam
trailing arm mount location allows a small amount of
negative camber gain in roll. The Watts linkage was
chosen over Panhard Rod or peg and slot designs as
offering the best compromise between kinematic ability
to compensate for beam twist, straight line motion path
in pitch and heave and structural integration.
The suspension was developed through a
combination of skid pad testing and transient
manoeuvres. The skid pad was used to establish
camber, toe, tyre pressure and roll stiffness distribution
settings. The J turn allows the brake bias and damper
settings to be developed while fine tuning the steady
state cornering settings and developing damper settings
for corner entry and exit. Slalom testing was used to
assess and develop direction changing capability and
roll velocity. WS10 is instrumented with front and rear
accelerometers, infrared tyre temperature sensors,
damper
linear
potentiometers,
steering
angle
potentiometer and a single axis gyro to measure yaw
rate. Suspension compliance is being assessed by
applying representative cornering loads between wheel
pairs and measuring the camber and toe compliance for
benchmarking of future designs and to identify areas
requiring additional stiffness in the current design.