The Effect of Chassis Stiffness on Race Car Handling Balance

It is often quoted that to be able to make a race car handle ‘properly’ by tuning the handling balance, the chassis should have a torsional stiffness of ‘X times the suspension stiffness’ or ‘X times the difference between front and rear suspension stiffness’ [1].

This paper looks at the fundamental issues surrounding chassis stiffness. It discusses why a chassis should be stiff, what increasing the chassis stiffness does to the race engineer's ability to change the handling balance of the car and how much chassis stiffness is required. All the arguments are backed up with a detailed quasi static analysis of the problem.

Furthermore, a dynamic analysis of the vehicle's handling using ADAMS Car and ADAMS Flex is performed to verify the effect of chassis stiffness on a race car's handling balance through the simulation of steady state handling manoeuvres.