Design approach for the vehicle's steering linkage fitted on rigid axle

Abstract

The steering system of a vehicle consists of two subsystems: the steering linkage, which correlates the steering angles of all the steerable road-wheels, and the actuation subsystem, which connects the driver's steering-wheel with one mobile element of the steering linkage. In the case of the vehicles with rigid steering axles, the most used steering linkage is a simple mechanism, composed of four bars (one being the base) connected with four joints. However, the design of the steering linkage isn't an easy task, mainly because the wanted correlation function is difficult to specify and because the packaging restrictions are very important. The present paper shows a possible approach to define the optimization function and the dimensions of the correlation steering mechanism.