From the Rolls-Royce experimental archive: a quarter of a million communications from Rolls-Royce, 1906 to 1960's. Documents from the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation (SHRMF).
Vehicle dynamics, focusing on gyroscopic movements, damping, and weight reduction.
Identifier | ExFiles\Box 29\1\ Scan004 | |
Date | 2nd September 1925 guessed | |
contd :- -2- a hillock the other. Through the irregularity of the road sometimes these gyrostatic movements are resisted by the shock of the irregular road surface. Sometimes they are assisted by the irregularities of the road surface, and when they are the shock becomes most apparent. On the face of it all it would appear that the damped pendulum lever is a really good device, and would be excellent if it could be rendered powerful enough, but this like your idea of an inertia damper, is limited, and the two things we can see possible are, (1) to prevent all sorts of shocks reaching the driver's hands without spoiling the steering, and (2) do all we can in damping to prevent the criss cross period building up, should it be reached by the car. This is the only solution we know, and is one which is safe and simple from all other points of view, but may not be sufficiently complete, requiring us to do something more in the future. In the meantime we are trying our best to see if we can decrease the weight of the ends of the axle, wheels, hubs, and brakes, so as to put up the periodicity, and decrease the energy of this phenomenon, but I fear on a big, fast, powerful car like ours, it will be very difficult not to occasionally touch these speeds, in which case we must trust to the hydraulic dampers to keep it within distressing limits. I may add here that I am extremely anxious to reduce in every possible way the weight of the front end of our 40/50 car, otherwise I am sure that its supremacy will not be safe. This also applies to the whole car, but especially first to the unsprung weight and then the sprung weight forward, then the unsprung weight aft. R.{Sir Henry Royce} | ||