A question to some of our more knowledgeable race car engineers.
I had the opportunity to look closely at the front suspension of a V8 Supercar (local touring car) and noticed something very interesting. All rose-joints were mounted horizontally (with mounting-bolts vertical rather than horizontal). The V8 Supercars here in Australia are the leading category of motorsport and teams have multi-million dollar budgets so you can bet that nothing in this area is done by chance. So I began to wonder and it became obvious to me that htere are some real advantages. All large forces applied to the rose-joints are either in the plane of travel or along the plane of the wishbone. So with a conventionally mounted rose-joint, under braking the spherical bearing will be trying to pop out of its housing. However, with the horizontally mounted rose-joints, the spherical bearing will always be pushing into the socket of the housing in all circumstances. Consequently, the forces within the rose-joint will be applied over a larger surface rather than a thin shoulder… much more reliability and less prone to wear. A still further advantage is to the rose-joint mounting brackets on the chassis. The forces will be applied along the plane of the bracket rather than being perpendicular to the plane, so reducing the bracket’s urge to bend. Anyway, thats how I see it.
This is a long way to ask the question but given these apparent design advantages, why is it that so many cars are designed with rose-joints placed vertically? And is it enough of an advantage to consider a modification to horizontal mounts?
I had the opportunity to look closely at the front suspension of a V8 Supercar (local touring car) and noticed something very interesting. All rose-joints were mounted horizontally (with mounting-bolts vertical rather than horizontal). The V8 Supercars here in Australia are the leading category of motorsport and teams have multi-million dollar budgets so you can bet that nothing in this area is done by chance. So I began to wonder and it became obvious to me that htere are some real advantages. All large forces applied to the rose-joints are either in the plane of travel or along the plane of the wishbone. So with a conventionally mounted rose-joint, under braking the spherical bearing will be trying to pop out of its housing. However, with the horizontally mounted rose-joints, the spherical bearing will always be pushing into the socket of the housing in all circumstances. Consequently, the forces within the rose-joint will be applied over a larger surface rather than a thin shoulder… much more reliability and less prone to wear. A still further advantage is to the rose-joint mounting brackets on the chassis. The forces will be applied along the plane of the bracket rather than being perpendicular to the plane, so reducing the bracket’s urge to bend. Anyway, thats how I see it.
This is a long way to ask the question but given these apparent design advantages, why is it that so many cars are designed with rose-joints placed vertically? And is it enough of an advantage to consider a modification to horizontal mounts?