Front Beam Axle-Reasons for Decline in Use

The front beam axle on the passenger car is effectively dead. There are several reasons forth is, but the
following are the main ones:
High unsprung mass
Single-wheel bumps are responsible for gyroscopic torques from both front wheels and contribute to a
predisposition toward wheel shimmy.
Single-wheel bumps produce front- end steering effects from both front wheels because of the
sideways deflection of the contact patches in relation to the car due to the high roll center.
Front axles, with front brakes, are liable to tramp.
Front brake torque implies considerable caster angle change unless a par- allel linkage is provided to
control it.
The narrow spring track implied by half- elliptic springs and front- wheel lock clearance imply low front
anti-roll resistance and a consequential oversteer effect unless an anti-roll bar is provided.
The limitations of the previous three points make it impossible in practice to get the front springs soft
enough to obtain a pitch- free ride.
Better utilization for passenger accommodation of the area occupied by the car on the road dictates
that engine and front axle occupy the same space.
Some of these limitations can be overcome by a variety of complications.
Even if they are, the result is less satisfactory than, and almost (if not quite) as expensive as, independent front
suspension.
However, beam axles continue to be used on some SUVs, albeit usually with coil spring suspension and good
location. This is because a beam axle can offer superior articulation and ground clearance in difficult off-road
conditions.
7.2 Independent Suspensions
As a result of the limitations outlined in the preceding section, American cars in 1935 generally adopted "knee
action, "that is, independent front suspension.
Poor roads on the European continent encouraged Ford and General Motors to transfer this U.S. technology
across the Atlantic to their subsidiaries in Germany and Britain. Some European companies such as Lancia
and Morgan had anticipated the Americans' moves, and now all manufacturers have adopted independent
front-wheel suspension, even for light and medium commercial vehicles.
Over the years, many types of independent front suspension have been tried.
Many of these have been discarded for various reasons. Only two basic concepts, the double wish bone and
the Mac-Pherson strut, have found wide-spread success in many varied forms.
The geometry of any independent front suspension should be devised to meet certain requirements:
It must allow the roll-center height to be arranged at a desired level.
It must allow cross-steering connections to be made to each wheel knuckle, which induce minimal variation of
toe settings with vertical wheel move-ment.
It should allow anti-dive geometry to be incorporated if required.
It must allow coil springs, torsion bars, or other springing means to give a desired load-deflection diagram.
It should be possible to incorporate telescopic dampers.
It should allow an anti-roll bar to be added if necessary.
It should not prevent some overlap of the engine with the front suspension to allow the driver's pedals to be
installed with minimum off set from the steering center line position.
It must withstand all the forces imposed on it by braking, accelerating, and cornering with the ability to isolate
the body structure from noise, vibration, and harshness.
It should restrict the inertia, gyroscopic, or other forces produced by vertical movement of the wheels.
It should create the minimum amount of friction associated with its vertical movement.
It should operate without noise throughout its full range of travel and reach its limits progressively.
7.3 Significant Obsolete Systems
The following front suspension systems can be regarded as significant in the evolution from early rigid front
axles to modern independent designs.
Pillar-Type Suspension
In a pillar-type suspension, vertical deflection is accommodated by the wheel hub carrier sliding up and down a
straight pillar. Examples of this were used by Morgan (on its three-wheeler) and by Lancia on its Lambda and
subsequent models. In these systems, the pillar was fixed to the sprung mass, and the hub carrier rotated in
steer about the pillar. The steering arm was connected to the hub carrier, the unsprung mass, as in most
systems today. The steering arm was driven through a drag link or track rod that constrained the end of the
steering arm to move in a circular are as the wheel moved up and down. The conflict between this circular
motion and the rectilinear motion of the wheel center, imposed by the sliding pillar, made it impossible: to avoid
wheel toe changes with up-and-down wheel movement. In practice, this meant that suspension movement had
to be drastically limited, generally more so on rebound than bump. Because of this, certain models suffered
from excessive understeer at high sideways accelerations when the limited suspension movement had been
used up by roll and practically all further weight transference was concentrated on the front wheels. The
Broulhiet and the post-World War II Invicta "Black Prince" relied on the hub carrier sliding up and down on a
ball- splined shaft that transmitted steering movement from a sprung steering linkage to the unsprung wheel.
This arrangement allowed the wheel to move up and down without bump steer.
With sliding pillar suspension, wheel camber and caster changes are confined to those due to roll and pitch
attitude changes of the sprung mass.

Duboneet-type suspension
The characteristic of this type of suspension is that kingpin bearings and steering linkage are on the sprung
part of the car, and the suspension movement occurs between the kingpin bearings and the wheel, typically
with a casing containing springs operated through a lever from a transverse horizontal pivot. An arm on the
pivot either had the wheel stub at its non-pivot end, or formed a part of a parallel linkage whose side remote
from the arm pivots carried the stub axle.
Trailing Links Parallelogram.
The 2suspension comprised two parallel trailing arms with transverse horizontal axes. The rearward end of
each arm had an outwardly projecting ball. These two balls allowed the steering movement and the refore
defined the kingpin axes. One of the levers on each side was connected to a torsion bar, providing the
springing medium.
In Its usual form with parallel horizontal axes and equal and parallel links, this suspension gave the wheel
straight upanddown movement in elevation. Thus, there is no gyroscopic action, and the roll center of the
suspension is at ground level. However, inertia torques are associated with this layout.
Swing Axles.
In these suspensions, the front wheel was carried by a single transverse arm, whose outer end incorporated
either the kingpin anchorage or bearings on which it could pivot. Some means of talking braking torque also
was provided, usually with a roughly fore- and- aft arm whose frame anchorage often was arranged to lie on
the pivot axis of the swing axle. In such a layout, as in the previous section, caster angle changes are confined
to those due to car attitude changes. However, there is considerable gyroscopic action and thus torque. With
the usual swing-arm lengths lightly less than the half track, the roll center is somewhat above the arm pivot
axis, and this leads to high weight transference in cornering.
Transverse Leaf Springs
The more or less transverse double-lever suspension is one of the two major types of front suspensions in
production today. In the early days of independent front suspensions, leaf springs sometimes were used to
combine the functions of spring and locating lever. This practice has two major disadvantages: first, the stress
caused by high fore-and- aft loading, resulting from braking forces; and second, the impossibility of getting
adequate up-and-down movements without thin leaves or high stresses or both. Interleaf friction also made it
extremely difficult to provide an acceptable ride quality as cars became lighter. However, such a layout has the
merit of simplicity and low cost.
Recent Independent Suspension Systems.
Double Wishbones
There are several ways in which pairs of parallel arms can be arranged to control suspension geometry. There
can be an upper and a lower trailing arm each side (used with transverse torsion bars, as on the now classic
Volkswagen Beetle layout), transverse tubular symmetrically arranged A-frame links, or angled derivatives and
hybrids. Parallel motion from equal-length links maintains wheel camber angles at their static value over
bumps, but causes track change sand positive camber angles to be generated by body roll,
MacPherson Struts

7.5 Double Steering-Pivot Front Suspensions.
With a conventional front suspension, in which the steering axis is defined by two single pivots, one upper and
one lower, the lower ball joint must be accommodated with in the envelope of the wheel if the lateral off set at
ground is to be with in sensible limits.

7.6 Friction in Strut and Link Type Suspensions
We have seen that friction damping is undesirable, although some inherent frictional forces obviously cannot
be entirely eliminated; This can be especially true when the damper performs a guiding function, and it applies
particularly in the Mac Pherson type strut and link suspension.