It’s differential this time

Posted by sam – August 6, 2019

Still the best simple explanation of complicated mechanics I have ever seen. This is where I learned how differentials work, at the age of 20+.

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  1. sam says:
    April 2, 2022 at 14:04

    Facebook comments:

    ST: What I have never understood is how this works when driving on an uneven terrain. I would expect that if only one wheel touches the ground at a certain moment in time, the wheel that touches the ground would stop spinning and the other wheel would spin at double speed. And a similar thing would happen if part of the road is wet and there is water under one wheel and on under the other. I’m sure this problem has been solved somehow.

    Sam Hardwick: Stiffness in the differential mechanism would still apply some force to the grounded wheel, right?

    ST: That’s one possible solution that I have been thinking about, but I wonder if it might decrease the efficiency unnecessarily.

    ST: What is needed is some way to limit the angular velocity difference between the two wheels. Maybe some stiffness would do it. Ideally the mechanism should allow easy movement at lower angular velocity different but resist strongly when the angular velocity difference is larger than a certain threshold.

      

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