Abstract
The steering mechanism is totally responsible for the directional control of an automobile. Accurate steering geometry ensures safe and comfortable ride especially while cornering at high speeds. Two turning wheels must turn by specific steering angles when negotiating a curve. For a general automobile, the angles the two wheels must turn for a curve of a particular radius are different. Accurate steering geometry ensures correct steering angles over the entire range of steering. Several practical arrangements are proposed by various people to obtain accurate or nearly accurate steering geometries. Many of them did not last long in real application due to several manufacturing and maintenance constraints they accompanied together. Today, the most widely used steering systems employ Ackerman Mechanism to obtain nearly accurate steering angles. The Ackerman Mechanism does not give absolutely correct steering angles whilst having certain other deficiencies of its own. However its simplicity, ease of manufacturing, reliability and durability have made it widely accepted even by most modern automobile manufactures in the world. The objective of this work is to come up with a completely new steering mechanism. It utilizes certain characteristics resent in the Ackerman Mechanism but would yield better results than the present Ackerman Mechanism based systems. It will give reasonably correct steering angles over a major portion of the total steering range. The design is very simple and easy to manufacture. At the same time it will enable more stable cornering and less tire wear of steered wheels. Since this is an approximate method, a computer program may be used to identify the optimum design figures by performing iterative calculations for a given vehicle geometry. The principles of approach, proposed mechanism, development techniques and major advantages of the new system are described in detail.