I’ve been researching curves and splines for a videogame project of mine.
I’m not 100% sure what it means to have a curve ‘banked’.
It seems to help vehicles with turns on curvy roads, but I don’t quite understand how exactly a curve is banked / what it means to bank a curve (visually) / how it helps with turns.
I have seen some formulas / math for it, but I’d like to understand the concept before exploring potential implementations.
In: Physics
The curve has a pitch, where the outside edge is a higher elevation than the inside edge. The normal force is the force of an object perpendicular to the ground. You can think of this as an arrow from the car’s center axis pointing down. Cars are very good at this. When that force and lateral forces diverge enough, and the tires lose traction, the car tends to fall off the road. This will happen most often in curves. I can personally attest to falling into a ditch on a flat curve at 30 mph (the speed limit) a day after it rained in my high school shitbox. It doesn’t take much. So by banking the curve, you close that angle of difference between the normal and lateral forces. That lateral force just points more down, so you get more down force in the curve. With an extreme bank, this can contribute significantly to traction. The turns on some NASCAR tracks are a lot higher than you might imagine, than you can appreciate on TV. For normal roads, there might be a bank of just a couple degrees to facilitate traction at the posted speed limit.
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