Tyre Camber

[akbar21881]

If you look carefully, all F1 car has a highly cambered tyre. Ferrari especially, its front tyres is tilt inward so much.

I know that this suspension geometry is set up to give maximum grip. But isnt the tilted tyres will wear unevenly,i.e will give problem to grip and tyres reliability.

what do you think about this?

[joseff]

In a nutshell,

Too little camber, and the outer edges would wear out too early from cornering.

Too much camber, and the inner edges would wear out too early from acceleration and braking.

It's a balancing act to maximize the use of tires.

[DVV RACING BODIES]

As the car roll during a corner, the camber is given to a tyre in order to achieve the maximum tyre surface in contact with the ground, so as joseff has said before, if you put too little camber in a certain tyre, during cornering, that tyre will aquire "positive camber" (top of the wheels leaning outwards). As you know, a "positive camber" situation does not help to the stability of the car.

Another "thumb rule" relative to the camber is this: "The more grip, the more camber you have to apply". It is logical if you think about it: If there is a great amount of grip, the car rolls more (there is more weight transfer), so you have to apply more camber to avoid a "positive camber situation"

[joseff]

I should've been more specific..

Excellent explanation DVV, with one thing to add: tires are cambered to present the optimum contact patch due deformation as well as the aforementioned roll.

Speaking about tire deformation and positive camber, it was a very big issue with the 60's Chevy Corvair (not sure abt the model year). The corvair had a live axle rear susupension with zero (or little negative) camber. During hard cornering, the outside rear tire would deform such that it creates a torque about the live axle, causing the whole rear outside suspension axle to "tuck under" the car's body.

This affair killed a number of unfortunate drivers who push their "sports car", and is often cited as an example of corporate penny-pushing taking precedence over safe design. It is also well documented in Ralph Nader's book, "Unsafe at Any Speed".

For those of you not familiar with this story, it's the 60's analog of the late 90's Audi TT snap-oversteer fiasco. Only back then, the cars weren't as safe (or as well built) as the Audi.

[Monstrobolaxa]

The Brigestone tires are designed for a specific camber angle....I don't know the right number but I have it at home....I'll post back on Monday with a explanation.[/quote]

[ajg1030]

Monstrobolaxa is right. Actually each tyre manufacture has very specific recomendations for camber settings as a starting position. High uneven wear is not an issue since the tires are useless after about 25 laps. What is more important is to ensure that the tires get to their optimum operating temps and that the tires do not go into a positive camber situation for starters. The suspention geometry has alot to do with how far the tire needs to be cambered above or below the manufactures recommendations (talking mm here), then the desired effect and track situation is taken into account by the engineers. There is so much more to camber than can be put into a short discussion forum. You should read a book on race car engineering and suspension setups to understand more. It gets pretty deep real fast. One of the things I have seen is that camber is usually more significant on a radial racing tire than on a bias ply. Goto a track on weekend and ask on of the tire manufacturer reps. He will give you a 3 hour lecture on tires.

[Steven]

good point here

just to confirm here: Williams introduced a new front suspension at Suzuka, which is likely to be used on next years' car. The team said it will need engineers to drive the front wheels with a little more camber

[joseff]

Btw Tomba, do you still have race-by-race updates? Is it gone or am I just too lazy to dig up the articles?

Cheers

[SpeedTech]

Just finished reading an article in F1 Racing, Bridgestone's camber is more compared to the Michelin's. The Michelin's apparently have more patch contact with less camber

[scarbs]

Camber also provides more lateral cornering force, called camber thrust, I do not understand the physics (may be Ben can explain) but a tyre with a small degree of camber will generate more cornering force than tyre totally flat to the ground.

[joseff]

That's because tires deform when presented with a cornering (essentially shear) load.

A slightly cambered tire has a less square (more parallelogram) contact patch in a straight, but as it deforms in a corner, the contact patch then becomes more square.

I hope that's understandable

[JAG]

I also understand that the extreme amount of camber is beneficial to the "Straight Line" speed of a car as the front wheels have less rolling resistance. Also the use of "Anti Roll Bars" have seemed to be less important in the modern race car, especially at the rear, so this would maybe explain the initial amount of camber setup

Just my 2 cents worth