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Z-Bar Design

The anti-roll bars connect the left and right side of the car in order to prevent excessive body roll. They also allow for easy tuning of the oversteer/understeer behavior of a car during steady state cornering.

I designed the front anti-roll bar for the 2018 car. It incorporates a titanium flexure bar that provides the roll stiffness. This bar can be twisted by pulling a cable from the driver’s seat in order to adjust the roll stiffness. This design allowed for a tighter packaging of the front shocks compared to previous years and incorporated shared fasteners in order to reduce the overall weight. The total mass of the new Z anti-roll bar assembly was less than 20% of the previous U-bar style design. I machined all of the components except the titanium flexure blade myself in the student machine shop.

Design Considerations

  • The roll bars must be easy to adjust for on track tuning

  • Weight is a key consideration, as the mass of any moving components adds to the unsprung mass of the car.

  • Fatigue of the flexure components must be considered as it endures high strain rates

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