On Sunday 07 March 2010 01:58:54 am Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Sunday 07 March 2010 01:08:47 am Mikkel wrote: > > On 03/06/2010 06:45 PM, Ed Greshko wrote: > > > A car would work without a differential in much the same way a wagon or > > > cart would. However, when cornering the tires would need to rotate at > > > different speeds. This would tend to cause slipping on one side and > > > dragging on the other and lead to control problems as well as damage to > > > the tires. > > > > A better fix would be to only drive one wheel. Having a way to lock > > in the second wheel would be useful, but not necessary. My snow > > blower is set up that way - a live axle, and only one wheel driving, > > unless you manually engage the lock on the second wheel so they both > > drive. > > That might be convenient for a snow blower, but not for a regular car. > Having torque only on one wheel means that only one wheel is pushing the > car forward. This would lead to control problems and damage to the tires > while driving straight, as opposed to corners. In addition, it would make > the whole car quite unstable at high speeds and during braking, since the > car's center of gravity is not inline with the friction force between the > tire and the ground (ie. nonzero torque in the horizontal plane). This > means that back of the car would tend to move sideways compared to the > front, while driving straight. > > I wouldn't want to drive such a car on a highway. Even more importantly, I > wouldn't want *others* to drive such cars on the same highway as me. :-) > > Not to mention things like accelerating/braking from/into a corner, driving > on slippery surfaces and such stuff. > > Finally, an eventual locking mechanism would be quite complicated to > construct and implement. You would want to keep the lock on all the time > except when cornering. And while cornering, the car would behave > differently in left corners compared to right corners. > > You can get a feeling of how such a car would behave if you appreciably > deflate one of the tires on a regular car. (Disclaimer: I am *not* > advising you to try that!!!) > > A differential is a *way* more simple and elegant solution, which > completely avoids all these problems. ;-) > > Best, :-) > Marko P.S. I'm a big fan of Formula 1, in case you didn't notice... :-D -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
