The simple geometry behind any road

(sandboxspirit.com)

35 points | by azhenley 2 days ago

3 comments

  • jstanley 1 hour ago
    You're missing one very important type of curve: a clothoid (or "Euler spiral") is a curve of continuously-varying radius, these are encountered on roads very frequently. And especially on race circuits.

    A clothoid is used to connect two lines the same way your fillet is, except instead of just 1 radius it has a radius configured for each end and smoothly changes in between.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_spiral

    They are also used in railways, because on a railway you don't have the freedom of moving the car's position across the road, so a transition from a straight track to a constant radius would imply an instantaneous step change in centrifugal force, or infinite jerk. Using a clothoid to smooth the change between the straight track and the constant-radius turn means the lateral acceleration increases smoothly instead of instantaneously.

  • red_admiral 1 hour ago
    And then you have various types of hairpin bend where you actually vary the width of the lanes with the radius: https://www.google.com/maps/@46.8360535,9.6369913,68m
  • dilberx 1 hour ago
    many are yet to catchup