trailer tilt

Opinion requested from engineer type people: R-pod is parked on a 20 degree slope for 6 months. That is to say tilted side to side not front to back. It is supported at 3 points , the 2 wheels and the front screw jack. Is it likely that this would/could  permanently bend or twist  the frame and/or bend the axle?

Wow 20 degrees is a pretty steep slope. First question. Can you put leveling blocks on the low side wheel to level up the trailer some?

Here’s what I think the math says, someone correct me if I have it wrong. At a 20 degrees side slope, the center of gravity will shift towards the downhill side by the sine of 20 degrees multiplied by twice the height of the center of gravity above the ground. The factor of 2 is because the cg moves downhill as the trailer is tilted and then the point where a vertical line from the new cg location hits the ground is the new balance points the new cg location. The sine of 20 deg is 0.34. We don’t know how high the cg is but let’s be conservative and say it’s 3 feet. I can’t imaging it’s higher than that. That would shift the cg to the low side by about 2 feet.

The wheel spacing is about 7.5 feet so instead of the load on the wheels being balanced with 3.75 feet on either side we’re at 1.75 feet on the downhill side and 5.75 feet on the uphill side. So we end up with about 75% of the load on the low side and 25% on the high side. The 75% represents a 50% increase in load. BTW this calc would have the rpod rollover point at about 36 degrees which probably isn’t way far off. 36 degrees is crazy steep to get sideways on.

When I looked at axle safety factor before yield failure I found it to be around 100% (2g’s) so you should be ok on the axle tube.

That’s for the steel. Steel is very elastic and won’t retain a deflection as long as you don’t exceed it’s yield point. I’m not so sure about the rubber the torsion arm sits in. Unlike steel, rubber and other polymer materials can take a compression set and not come back all the way when the pressure is released. You could find that the low side ends up lower after long term storage because the torsion arm doesn’t rotate all the way back where it was.

If you can as a minimum I’d suggest parking the trailer with the slide side (which is heavier) uphill. And level up the trailer as much as possible so you don’t have to worry about it.

If the fridge is left on yes.

Good question on the frame. It is has roughly the same 2x safety factor (2 g load to read yield) as does the axle tube. So I think that will be ok.

The biggest consideration will be rubber possibly taking a compression set and effecting the torsion arm angle I think.

It’s a possibility is all, I don’t know enough about the rubber compound in the torsion axle to say one way or the other. Not worth taking the risk for me, just to avoid putting some blocks under the low tire.