Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Verburg
The Roll Center Height affects the lever arm length causing cornering roll.
.....
|
I love suspension geometry stuff. It makes sense but it's absolutely not immediately intuitive. I'll say that raised spindles and bringing the front end back up a bit has really helped the front end.
For a little more on the concept--the roll center is the imaginary point in which the body tries to rotate (at that axle). The distance between the center of gravity (where side forces are applied) and the roll center is like a moment arm, so the higher the distance between CG and roll center the more torque there is on the body.
With a wild enough roll center you could actually get the body to roll opposite to cornering forces, but everything else would be terrible.
Interestingly, I saw in Formula 1 that at one point Ferrari had a neutral RC/CG at the front end to remove roll entirely. They stopped using it, though, because they were getting a ton of sideways movement at the front wheels under braking which upset grip (the wheels would move away from the body under braking load).