How Lsd's Work

[simplegreen]

The differential has three jobs:

To aim the engine power at the wheels
To act as the final gear reduction in the vehicle, slowing the rotational speed of the transmission one final time before it hits the wheels
To transmit the power to the wheels while allowing them to rotate at different speeds (This is the one that earned the differential its name.)


Why You Need a Differential
Car wheels spin at different speeds, especially when turning. You can see from the animation below that each wheel travels a different distance through the turn, and that the inside wheels travel a shorter distance than the outside wheels. Since speed is equal to the distance traveled divided by the time it takes to go that distance, the wheels that travel a shorter distance travel at a lower speed. Also note that the front wheels travel a different distance than the rear wheels.


For the non-driven wheels on your car -- the front wheels on a rear-wheel drive car, the back wheels on a front-wheel drive car -- this is not an issue. There is no connection between them, so they spin independently. But the driven wheels are linked together so that a single engine and transmission can turn both wheels. If your car did not have a differential, the wheels would have to be locked together, forced to spin at the same speed. This would make turning difficult and hard on your car: For the car to be able to turn, one tire would have to slip. With modern tires and concrete roads, a great deal of force is required to make a tire slip. That force would have to be transmitted through the axle from one wheel to another, putting a heavy strain on the axle components.

The differential is a device that splits the engine torque two ways, allowing each output to spin at a different speed.

Spinning at Different Speeds
We will start with the simplest type of differential, called an open differential. First we'll need to explore some terminology: The image below labels the components of an open differential.



When a car is driving straight down the road, both drive wheels are spinning at the same speed. The input pinion is turning the ring gear and cage, and none of the pinions within the cage are rotating -- both side gears are effectively locked to the cage.


Note that the input pinion is a smaller gear than the ring gear; this is the last gear reduction in the car. You may have heard terms like rear axle ratio or final drive ratio. These refer to the gear ratio in the differential. If the final drive ratio is 4.10, then the ring gear has 4.10 times as many teeth as the input pinion gear.
When a car makes a turn, the wheels must spin at different speeds.


Limited slip differentials use various mechanisms to allow normal differential action when going around turns. When a wheel slips, they allow more torque to be transferred to the non-slipping wheel.

Clutch-Type Limited Slip
The clutch-type LSD is probably the most common version of the limited slip differential

This type of LSD has all of the same components as an open differential, but it adds a spring pack and a set of clutches. Some of these have a cone clutch that is just like the synchronizers in a manual transmission.

The spring pack pushes the side gears against the clutches, which are attached to the cage. Both side gears spin with the cage when both wheels are moving at the same speed, and the clutches aren't really needed -- the only time the clutches step in is when something happens to make one wheel spin faster than the other, as in a turn. The clutches fight this behavior, wanting both wheels to go the same speed. If one wheel wants to spin faster than the other, it must first overpower the clutch. The stiffness of the springs combined with the friction of the clutch determine how much torque it takes to overpower it.

Getting back to the situation in which one drive wheel is on the ice and the other one has good traction: With this limited slip differential, even though the wheel on the ice is not able to transmit much torque to the ground, the other wheel will still get the torque it needs to move. The torque supplied to the wheel not on the ice is equal to the amount of torque it takes to overpower the clutches. The result is that you can move forward, although still not with the full power of your car.