Newtonian Mechanics – Why is There No Centripetal Force Acting on a Vehicle While Taking a Turn on Unbanked Roads?

centrifugal forcecentripetal-forcenewtonian-mechanicsrotational-dynamics

Can someone help me in understanding why there is no centripetal force acting on a vehicle while taking a turn?

Basically, my physics teacher used a non-inertial frame where the frame was at the centre of the turn but if the observer was from ground frame, then he would have seen that the car is rotating and would have a centripetal force.

To be more specific, if these type of questions are solved in accordance to ground frame, then will there be centripetal force and no centrifugal force?

Best Answer

The centripetal force from the road doesn't vanish in either frame. The difference is that there's another force in the rotating frame that cancels it out.

Suppose we have a car driving in a circle on a flat track at a uniform speed. In the ground frame, there is a force of friction pushing the car towards the center of the circle, with a magnitude of $m v^2/r = m r \omega^2$. Thus, the car executes circular motion in the ground frame. Note that when any object executes circular motion, the object is accelerating (its velocity is changing in direction, if not in magnitude), and so there must be an "unbalanced" force acting towards the center; this is what we call a centripetal force.

In a frame rotating with the car, there is still a frictional force pushing the car inwards, with the same magnitude as in the ground frame. However, in this frame there is also a centrifugal force with magnitude $m r \omega^2$ pointing outwards. These two forces cancel out exactly, and so the car remains at rest in the rotating frame.