The other day, I was reading an article about damper damping force and the spring characteristics of tires.
I found it very interesting and informative.
Here are a few of the key points:
- A typical damping force curve is not enough because it does not measure actual back-and-forth motion.
- By actually measuring the back-and-forth motion, you can evaluate things like friction and response delays.
- In recent years, tires have tended to have higher vertical spring rates, while their lateral spring rates have not changed as much.
- So how should we adapt the car to that?
The article also included a discussion between people from manufacturers and tuners about how to deal with the latter issue.
When I read this kind of deep technical discussion, I often find myself thinking that the better someone is at this stuff, the more carefully they separate what is clearly known from what is still unknown.
They carefully distinguish between what is speculation and what has already been established.
Even when something is considered to be “already known,” I think you still need to look at it with some skepticism. That’s why I’m often impressed by how much attention really knowledgeable people pay to how certain something actually is.
A friend of mine once said that “theory and measurement” are both important, and I think that’s right.
Neither theory alone nor measurement alone is enough.
Cars are complicated, so it’s easy to think about them based on what feels intuitive to us as humans. But there are many things about cars that don’t work that way. That’s why I want to be careful about how certain we can really be about each of the many different elements that make up a car.
Many of the components used in cars have their own specifications, and they come with data measured under certain conditions. Naturally, the people designing cars use that data as a reference.
The same goes for suspension components such as springs and dampers.
An automaker gives a suspension manufacturer a specification and says, “Make it like this.”
Evaluating damping force is actually very difficult, but even so, we often get to see evaluations based on damping force curves and things like that.
When it comes to tires, though, hardly any of that kind of data is made public.
No data!
If you’re going to use tires in motorsports, I wish manufacturers would at least provide two things: cornering force characteristics versus load, and cornering force characteristics versus slip angle. But as product information, absolutely none of that is available.
You sometimes see graphs like these in technical papers published by tire manufacturers, but they almost never identify the specific tire model.
I imagine there are various reasons why publishing this kind of data might be inconvenient. There may be significant variations between production batches, and tire freshness could also make a big difference. But honestly, the reason doesn’t really matter. What’s important is the fact that the data isn’t there, and that there are still things we simply don’t know very well.
According to a technical book published by Bridgestone Corporation, even today, with tire research having advanced so much, there are still many things that even tire manufacturers themselves don’t fully understand.
Well, I guess that’s just how it is…
What do we know, and what don’t we know? Where does speculation end and actual measurement begin?
I want to judge things carefully for myself, rather than being swayed by all the different opinions floating around on the internet.
When I read articles written by people I respect, I’m always amazed by how much attention they pay to how certain something really is.
I can’t help but be impressed.
I want to learn from them and be that way myself, as much as I can.