how do sway bars affect under/oversteering?
In: Other
Sway bars, or more formally known as anti-roll bars, allows us to reduce the amount of body roll a vehicle has in response to cornering.
A car with a soft suspension and no anti-roll bars will look like it’s toppling over towards the outside of the curve – imagine a bus going around a corner too quickly and then falling over.
That same bus, fitted with specifically sized anti-roll bars could take the same corner at the same speed and still remain almost level.
But such a “strong” anti-roll effect would require a heavy, thick and long bar which would impact the suspension in other ways also.
We can tune the response of a car’s suspension by altering the dimensions of the anti-roll bars – usually by:
1. Using a stiffer or more compliant material
2. Changing the middle portion’s thickness, thicker is stiffer.
3. Changing the two outer arms’ lengths – shorter arms are stiffer than longer arms.
Very stiff anti-roll makes the inner wheels lose more grip, if the rear is stiffer than the front, you get over-steer, and if the front is stiffer than the rear, you get under-steer – assuming everything else stays the same!
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