The effect of camber control on power consumption during handling manoeuvres

Vehicle power consumption is receiving widespread attention in the industry. One of the approaches is to include camber control to reduce power loss during cornering. This approach changes the camber angle during cornering, reducing the steering angle needed. The published literature is limited to semi-empirical tyre models and simplified vehicle models. This investigation uses a physics-based tyre model and a full vehicle model to verify if the power savings reported in the literature are indeed achievable. The simulation results indicate that the reported power savings are indeed possible, but that the power saved during normal driving is limited. It is concluded that camber control is not suited to reducing power consumption during normal driving. A deeper investigation revealed that the use of radial tyres is one explanation for this finding. Camber control is thus not recommended as a power-saving strategy for practical applications using traditional radial tyres.