Instrumented undriven steering wheel to illustrate dynamic behavior of vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, a low-cost dynamometer for undriven, steered wheels is described.  The dynamometer was produced to determine whether such an instrumented mechanism is practical.  Four S-beam load cells and two opto-counters were used to obtain all moments, forces, and points of their application.  Overturning, aligning, and rolling resistance moments besides vertical force are directly measured by the load cells.  The opto-counters detect wheel angular velocity and steering angle.  The dynamometer evaluation results showed significant correlation between expected values and measured data with high accuracy.  Wheel dynamic behavior can be defined according to dynamic and kinematic analysis in which relative calculations have minimum simplifying assumptions.

Keywords: dynamometer, wheel forces and moments, point of force application, load cell, opto-counter