All You Need to Know About Traction

Everyone of you must have definitely heard about traction and I am sure many of you even love it upto the core. Going by the exact definition, traction or tractive force is the force used to generate motion between a body and a tangential surface. It is the force due to which your beloved bike rolls on the road and you attain impressive numbers on the speedometer.

Today, we bring you all the necessary aspects related to traction and all the things you need to know about this physical entity.

Importance of Traction:

Traction or tractive force can also be defined as the total tractive force that exists on the surface and is parallel to the direction of the movement. In simple words, it is the force responsible for the movement of your bike on the road. If there would have been no traction, then your bike would end up doing wheelspins at one particular point without going nowhere.

Role of Tyres in Traction:

As you know, tyres play the most important role in the rolling of any vehicle on the road. Tyres that have a good patch surface to the road offer a good traction due to greater area of contact. Furthermore, tyres come with definite patterns on the outer circumference known as treads. These treads help to get rid off the sand and water that tends to go towards the tyre center. In case of mud or snow, deep treaded tyres lock the loose material instead of making it roll along with the tyre.

Need to Control Traction:

We know that tyres are the medium of contact between the road and the bike due to which your machine rolls down effortlessly on the roads. In comparison to cars that have a large surface area of contact available at the tyres, bikes come with a comparatively curved surfaced tyres, the simple reason why bikes are capable of doing cornering while cars are not. Hence, in order to provide sufficient grip at turns, bike tyres are made in such manner. So, if we notice, bikes have a less, in fact very less contact area available at tyres with road. In case of superbikes that have immense power delivery, the rear wheel end up spinning in case of aggressive accelerations. This eventually results in burnouts & wheelspins that are simply undesirable when you are not ready and can eventually get you in trouble. This is when traction control system comes into play. The system has sensors installed on the tyres that keeps a check on the wheel speed and the available traction for that point of time.

Motorcycle Traction Control System Explained:

The basic principle of traction control system is to monitor the rear wheel spin. This can be done by various methods but the most common way is to do by ABS sensors. This data is then fed into the ECU (Engine Control Unit) after which traction control system comes into play. The ECU is responsible for keeping a check on the wheel speed and various Traction Control (TC) maps are loaded into it in order to get the right amount of traction from it. After wheel speed and lean angles are taken into consideration, the traction control takes place by the following three ways:

1. Cylinder Drop: In multi cylinder engines, a cylinder drop means stopping the fuel injection in one cylinder in order to bring the drop in torque. So, this eventually means if it is a three cylinder engine, the cylinder drop means 33% reduction in torque, whereas in a four-cylinder engine, the cylinder drop refers to 25% reduction in power.

2. Retardation in Ignition: In this method, when the bike loses traction, ignition automatically gets retarded. This results in a 20% torque drop, which accounts for something and helps in controlling traction.

3. Throttle Closing: In non traction control enabled bikes, this technique is and should be implemented by riders. Modern bikes have ride-by-wire control technology that causes the bike’s fuel flow to electronically stop automatically when needed, resulting in a drop in torque.

Traction Control System Explained: