Active Camber Control for Solar Car Handling

ISEF Category: Engineering Technology: Statics and Dynamics

Subcategory: Ground Vehicle Systems  ·  Difficulty: Intermediate  ·  Setup: School Lab  ·  Time: 1 to 2 Months

The Hook

A tiny wheel angle change can decide whether a car slides or sticks. That is why race teams care so much about camber, the tilt of a wheel relative to the road. You can test that same idea on a scaled solar car and measure whether active camber helps it corner better than a fixed setup.

What Is It?

Camber is the inward or outward tilt of a wheel when you look at a car from the front or back. If the top of the wheel leans in, that is negative camber. If it leans out, that is positive camber. In corners, the tire does not sit flat on the road, so changing camber can change how much grip the tire can make.

Your project asks a simple engineering question. Can a rear axle that changes camber on purpose help a small solar car corner better than one that stays fixed? A compliant hinge made from TPU, a flexible plastic, can bend a little. An RC servo can change that bend on command. Think of it like adjusting the angle of your shoe before running on a turn, because the contact patch, the part touching the ground, changes with the tilt.

Why This Is a Good Topic

This is a strong science fair topic because you can measure a real design change, keep the setup small, and compare it against a fixed baseline. The problem connects to vehicle handling, tire grip, and energy-efficient transport, so your results have a real engineering purpose. You can learn mechanical design, controlled testing, and data analysis without needing a professional lab.

Research Questions

• How does active camber change the lap time on a homemade skidpad compared with fixed camber?
• What is the effect of camber angle on the maximum cornering speed before the car starts to slip?
• Does a TPU compliant hinge improve grip more than a rigid axle at the same camber setting?
• To what extent does servo-driven camber correction reduce lateral slide distance in tight turns?
• Which camber setting gives the best balance between cornering grip and straight-line stability?
• How does tire material affect the benefit of active camber on the scaled solar car?
• What is the effect of axle load distribution on the handling gain from active camber?

Basic Materials

• Scaled solar car chassis or simple test vehicle platform
• TPU sheet or TPU-printed hinge piece
• Small RC servo with horn and mounting hardware
• Microcontroller or servo tester
• Rechargeable battery pack
• Assorted screws, nuts, washers, and zip ties
• Digital angle gauge or protractor
• Tape measure
• Masking tape for marking skidpad lanes
• Measuring wheel or meter stick
• Digital kitchen scale with 0.1 g accuracy
• Phone camera for side-view recording.

Advanced Materials

• 3D printer or access to TPU printing service
• Force gauge or load cell for cornering-force measurements
• High-frame-rate camera or slow-motion phone mode
• Motion-tracking markers for axle and wheel angle tracking
• Data acquisition board or microcontroller with logging
• Rubber test tires in more than one compound
• Rigid comparison axle parts in aluminum, acrylic, or PLA
• Skidpad surface material with known friction behavior
• ImageJ for frame-by-frame angle measurement
• Python notebook for graphing and statistical testing.

Software & Tools

• ImageJ: Measures wheel angle, body roll, and skidpad motion from video frames.
• Python: Cleans test data, graphs results, and compares fixed versus active camber.
• Google Sheets: Tracks trial data, calculates averages, and makes quick charts.
• Tracker: Follows the car frame by frame if you want motion analysis from video.
• Tinkercad: Helps you sketch hinge and mount ideas before building hardware.

Experiment Steps

1. Define the exact handling metric you will compare, such as lap time, slip distance, or maximum stable speed.
2. Choose one baseline configuration with fixed camber so every later change has a clear control.
3. Design the camber mechanism around one variable at a time, such as hinge stiffness, servo angle range, or axle mounting position.
4. Plan a skidpad test that gives repeatable turns and a way to measure cornering performance the same way every trial.
5. Build a data table before testing so you know which measurements matter and which ones you can ignore.
6. Set up a comparison plan that checks whether the active system helps enough to matter, not just whether it moves.

Common Pitfalls

• Letting the servo horn flex under load, which makes the camber angle you think you set different from the angle the axle actually holds.
• Using a skidpad surface that changes texture from trial to trial, which changes grip more than the camber does.
• Comparing active camber to a fixed setup with different wheel alignment, which makes the results unfair.
• Measuring cornering only by eye, which misses small handling changes and makes the data hard to defend.
• Ignoring straight-line tracking after adjusting camber, which can hide a tradeoff between cornering grip and stability.

What Makes This Competitive

A stronger project will not just ask whether the car turns better. It will explain why, with clean measurements of angle, traction, and stability. You can raise the level by comparing more than one tire type, testing more than one surface, or using statistics to show whether the improvement is real. A clear mechanical model plus careful controls will make the project feel much more like engineering research.

Project Variations

• Test the same camber system on a front axle instead of a rear axle to compare steering effects with traction effects.
• Swap the TPU hinge for a different flexible material and compare how compliance changes cornering performance.
• Keep the camber fixed, then study how tire width or tread pattern changes skidpad grip on the same chassis.

Learn More

• NASA NTRS: Search for reports on wheel alignment, rover mobility, and vehicle handling concepts.
• MIT OpenCourseWare: Look for vehicle dynamics, mechanics, or design courses that explain load transfer and traction.
• USGS Publications Warehouse: Search for engineering and testing methods that use controlled comparison and measurement.
• NOAA Education Resources: Use the physics and measurement sections for data collection ideas and graphing practice.
• Journal of Terramechanics: Search for peer-reviewed articles on tire interaction, traction, and ground contact behavior.