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Keeping rubber solidly adhered to the road is the goal and loss of adhesion is failure. As long as the center of gravity is low enough to prevent rollover, a vehicle’s tire patch is a key limiting factor to how well a car corners and accelerates.
I submit that the ultimate performance car should
have eight wheels! These wheels would be either span the width of the vehicle or be mounted in tandem. Power would and braking would be applied to all wheels. The objective is to develop a car that simply does not need to brake in the corners. What are the limits?
The Tyrrell P34 F1 had dual tandem front wheels, while F1s Kurtis Kraft-Offenhauser KK500G, March 240/771, Ferrari 312T2 (T6), and Williams FW08B sported dual rear wheels. These cars were never fully developed because initial models were neither faster nor slower than their four wheeled equivalents; cost, complexity and pit times eventually did them in.
With engines now routinely exceeding 300 hp in lowly production cars, and exceeding 700 hp in exotics, it is time to rethink how this power is put down to the road.
75% baked...
http://www.simonper...-come-around-again/
Panther Six and a more recent attempt [Ned_Ludd, Aug 06 2007]
More Panther, etc.
http://www.oto6.fre...s/6rouespanther.htm
[Ned_Ludd, Aug 06 2007]
Quite a number of six-wheelers
http://www.oto6.fr/
[Ned_Ludd, Aug 06 2007]
The Friction of Automobile Tires
http://www.physics....1/tirefriction.html
[ldischler, Aug 06 2007]
[link]
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The idea is true genius. I would suggest extending it to wheels the width of the vehicle, ala road-rollers. |
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Does adding more tires really increase the total contact patch area? I thought patch size related to vehicle weight and tire pressure. |
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//Does adding more tires really increase the total contact patch area?//
I'm thinking of tanks. They have great traction. |
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The link "Friction of Automobile Tires" suggests that it's not the contact area per se, but where the maximum force lies within that area. And they talk about wider tires being better, but obviously this would not be the case in a turn. |
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The theory falls down as soon as you incorporate both deformation of the tire and the variable treading which is now common. |
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I seem to remember from somewhere that the area of rubber on the ground is dependent only on the tyre pressure. |
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Edit: Just saw the anno by [Galbinus_Caeli], but that's not where I remember it from. |
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I imagine that in a simplified model, yes contact patches correspond only to tire pressure and the weight of the vehicle, because each additional tire decreases the load carried by each individual tire, shrinking it's patch. In practice, I think that it's not really a linear relationship, and benefits would be had by adding more tires, though there would be a point of diminishing returns. |
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It's important to note the 6-wheel F1 cars were not made to improve grip, but to improve aerodynamics. Two small tires have a smaller aerodynamic profile than one large one. |
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On the other hand, the losses due to weight, friction, and mechanical complexity IMO outweigh the benefits, as they did in F1. The current solution is AWD, not more tires. |
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Gecko tyres would also allow you to drive up the sides of buildings and park on the roof. |
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