Kinematic and sensitivity analysis and optimization of planar rack-and-pinion steering linkages (Q959065)

Considering the kinematic configurations of different steering linkages for a vehicle, the authors propose two mathematical models of optimization. The former is a minimization of the steering error (defined as absolute difference between the actual angle made by the other front wheel during steering manever and the correct angle for the same wheel), and the latter is a minimization of the sensitivity (defined by the sum of three weighting factors of sensitivity of length elements of the steering linkage). The authors also examine the ``post-optimal'' sensitivity (defined as the ratio of the variation of objective function to a small variation of design parameters at optimum point).