Traction or “Road traction” as we know it, is the friction that is generated between the tyres and the road. Because of this traction your car is able to move forward. As the contact area between the road and the tyres increases the traction produced will be greater in magnitude and the grip of your vehicle to the road will be better. Moreover one must know that the surface of tyres tend to smoothen up as they are used over time, and as a result of this smoothening up the road traction is generally decreased causing diminished road grip. As a consequence, the car is prone to slips hence driving will be uneasy.
Traction is all about Road Grip and Control
You can draw an analogy by emulating the scenario of driving on road covered by snow. The ice on the surface is slippery and it is a classic example of the traction-less road. Have you ever tried driving downhill from Murree in the month of January after a decent snowfall? Try doing that and you will immediately realize the importance of traction of tyres.
Significance of Suspension
While thinking about the performance of a car, we generally attribute it to the power generated by the engine. But all the horsepower generated by the pistons of the engine would turn out to be useless if the driver does not have full control over the car. This is the reason why automobile manufacturers have invested a lot of time, cash and energies in refining the suspension system of cars along the lines of perfecting the car engines.
The car suspension ensures that the requisite traction or friction should exist between tyres and the surface of the road, hence providing stability in steering, efficiency in handling and most importantly ensuring the comfort of passengers present in the vehicle.
In fact, the informal terms attributed with the suspension of the car are about making sure of three C’s i.e. Contact, Comfort and Control.
The suspension ensures smoothness on the Road
While driving on the road, if the road is bump free the suspension ensures that the traction between road and tyres is not lost. While most of the times the roads are never flat. The highways which are freshly paved have their imperfections and these imperfections interact directly with the tyres of your car. As we all know that all forces are a combination of magnitude and direction hence every bump on the road will result in the moving of wheel in a direction which is perpendicular to the surface of the road. The magnitude of this movement is determined by the size of the bump off course.
Springs provide Stability
The designers of vehicle suspension make sure, while designing the springs of the suspension system, that after encountering every droop or bump the disturbances generated are effectively dampened by damping coefficients of the springs, thus providing a steady and stable state to the vehicle.
Then again while turning your vehicle it’s the suspension system that ensures the traction between tyres and road and the balance that is required to provide effective stability to the car.
