Steering System

Introduction

Steering system, the direction provider of the automobile is the system, without which the cars destination cannot be determined, hence accounts be a major system.

The steering system converts the rotational motion of the steering wheel into a turning motion to the wheels in contact with the road and the steering wheel turns in for larger rotation to produce a change for the road wheels of shorter radius.

The most common type of steering system is of Rack and Pinion steering system and conventional steering system includes Recirculating ball steering system.

Rack and Pinion System

In this kind of system, the the pinion is a small gear attached to the end of the steering column and its teeth are always in direct contact with the teeth of a straight row of rack, both of these components are enclosed inside a small housing.

Working of Rack and Pinion

When the driver rotates the steering wheel, the attached steering column mounted at an angle called the steering angle also rotates.

This rotation of the steering column in turn rotates the pinion attached to the end of the steering column and above the rack.

As the pinion rotates, due to all time meshing of the teeth of both, the rack and the pinion makes the rack to move linearly.

The rack on both the ends is attached to the tie rods each side for each front wheel.

This rotation motion of steering wheel, steering column, pinion is converted into linearly motion of the rack and thus the wheels.

Recirculating Ball Steering System

This system is usually employed in heavy duty vehicles such as trucks, buses, etc.

This system consists of a large metal block, having drilled a threaded hole inside which a threaded steering column is placed, this type arrangements allows the metal block to move in leinearly motion.

This metal block also has large teeth protruding outwards directed that in turn moves the pitman arm.

This pitman arm is then coupled with tie rods, each for each side wheel. and thus the wheel in contact with the road rotates along with the tie rods (pitman arm).

Power Steering System

This system is could be now found in all vehicles and could be considered as a basic default upgradation to the previous conventional steering system.

This system was introduced to reduce the human effort and assist them to drive with ease.

This system though comes with some addition of the components to the conventional steering system.

It includes the pump, pressure tubes, rotary control valve, fluid lines and a hydraulic piston.

The pump is used to pump in the fluid, the control valve to regulate the amount and the direction of the fluid flowing and the hydraulic piston to move in such a way to assist more on the side needed when the driver actually steers the vehicle.

Originally published at https://www.carengineered.com on October 26, 2020.