The Kinematics of Cornering

Cars have to negotiate corners. But not all cars do that the same way. This is particularly evident in race cars, where the ability to negotiate a corner is a crucial aspect to minimize the lap time. In this chapter the kinematics of a vehicle while taking a corner is exploited. At first sight taking a corner looks quite a trivial task. But designing a vehicle that does it properly is one of the main challenges faced by a vehicle engineer. Therefore, there is the need to investigate what really happens during the cornering process. It will be shown that some very significant kinematical quantities must follow precise patterns, for the car to get around corner in a way that makes the driver happy. In some sense, the geometric features of the trajectory must adhere to some pretty neat criteria. The topics covered have never been employed in vehicle dynamics before.