Thats what I just said above! Centre of grav well in front of the wheels causes stability!!!
Any load from the trailer is then spread
As it would be if you moved the caravans wheels back...
A caravan is
A66 caravan smash 599We are talking about lateral not vertical stability so thats not even relevant. Err no. Its entirely valid. Explain using physics and show your "working out...
Well since the towbar is so close to the rear wheels it would take an awful lot of weight to effect steering! Trust me a bag of cement (or all the heavy lugage in the caravan) under the front seats cures the weaving.
A66 caravan smash 597Wrong. There HAS to be some weight on the tow bar to get the required stability. Ask a manufacturer if you cant understand basic physics! Yes. But because of the...
The more there is the greater the lateral stability though. Correctly loaded caravans do not snake. Its simple physivs!
You mean not doing so will (and often does) surely!!! Sticking the heavy stuff in the front end is all thats required.
In the same way that an eirofoil on an aircraft is stable (neutral actually) when the centre of pressure and the centre of gravity are in the same spot - so is a caravan. Make a plane fractionally tail heavy and it does what the occilating caravan does. Its "unstable" in pitch. And it gets worse with each occilation. Moving the weight (cargo-fuel whatever) forwards slightly returns it to a neiutral stability configuration. Moving the C of G too far forwards results in an over stable (and hard to turn, pull up, etc with heavy controls) aircraft. The same things apply to our caravan.
A66 caravan smash 598Not to any significant extent. Remember cars are intended to be driven with or without up to 5x...
When the centre of grav and the centre of pressure (the wheels) are in the same place we get a balancing caravan. If we ignore aerodynamics for a moment it would be neutral. Not stable but not unstable. But we want "stable" or any wind or whatever that knocks it off course will continue to sway back and forth. So then we need some weight on the tow bar. Now we have the c of g in front of the c of pressure (its wheels.) Now any swinging will tend to diminish naturally. Exept that our "stability amount is marginal" So the faster we go the greater the aerodynamic stability of a square box becomes. And it increases with the square of the speed too! So we get to a certain speed and it starts swinging from side to side. All thats required is a) a big virtical fin! Which looks daft and would be counter productive in croswinds... Or b) the c of g moving further in front of the axle(s), Either by moving it-them back, or adding transfering some weight forwards untill the trailer becomes nose heavy and puts more weight on the tow bar. And "damping" kits sold do not really help, because they are addressing the result of a different problem after the event. And the actually disguise the small movements resulting in a false level of driver security and so he goes a bit faster until suddenly its all gone badly wrong.
