Rear axle
Pink: steering knuckle
Yellow: wishbones
Red, green, blue: other single links.
In a vehicle, the rear axle is the axle that is attached behind the vehicle's center of gravity and on which the rear wheels are mounted . In addition to the wheel carriers , the rear axle also includes the fastening elements on the vehicle: handlebars , joints , springs and dampers. If necessary, the subframe , the part of the body to which the axle is attached, is added.
There are numerous technical versions of rear axles. The simplest design is the rigid axle , in which the wheels are connected to one another via a rigid axle body. The rigid axle was increasingly being replaced by the independent wheel suspension in passenger cars .
Simple constructions like the swing axle of the VW Beetle are no longer used because of their poor driving dynamics. Today more and more independent wheel suspensions are used, e.g. B. the trailing arm axle in vehicles with front-wheel drive, the multi-link axle or the integral link axle as examples of multi-link axles.
In front-wheel drive cars , twist beam axles and their variants are often used at the rear . There can also be several axles behind the center of gravity, for example in the case of heavy trucks that consistently have several rear axles.
In rare cases, which is steering the vehicle to the rear axle, such as with a forklift . In the case of trucks with multiple rear axles, however, one or more of them can be additionally steered in order to reduce tire wear.