Axle location question

[joshuabardwell]

I asked earlier for his vast knowledge and scared him off. Obviously he is still testing his answers in the lab.

This does beg the question, though: hypothetically speaking, what could one do to compensate for negative tongue weight? The first thing that comes to my mind is to add weight over the vehicle's rear axle, since one problem with negative tongue weight is that it unloads the vehicle's axle.

Another problem is that it places the majority of weight on the trailer behind the trailer axle, which creates a lever effect when that weight moves around. The trailer axle's contact point with the ground is the fulcrum and the trailer's coupler is the end of the lever. This allows the trailer to really pull the car around, since a small motion at the back of the trailer is magnified by the larger length of lever arm between the axle and the coupler. This seems to me to be like a Class 1 lever.

When the trailer is properly loaded, the majority of weight is between the axle (fulcrum) and the coupler, and the length of lever arm between the majority of the cargo and the coupler is reduced. This seems to me to be more like a Class 2 lever, which doesn't have the same magnifying effect on motion as a Class 1.

I wonder whether you could compensate for the "lever" effect by adding anti-sway bars or something like that.

Not that there's any substitute for properly loading your trailer, mind you... just hypothetically.

 

[Renze]

I asked earlier for his vast knowledge and scared him off. Obviously he is still testing his answers in the lab.

I've been there, done that, in a previous job i designed trailers, we were a bunch of rednecks that nonetheless got a single axle 5th wheel trailer steering system DOT approved... as for vehicle dynamics, DOT wanted real world track testing: They dont even take any lab tests and calculations, too much deviation from the real world to tell anything about the dynamics..
So this guy doesnt fool me with his attitude.