Modeling and validation of electronic wedge brake mechanism for vehicle safety system

Abstract

This paper presents the performance characteristic of an electronic wedge brake (EWB) mechanism for a vehicle braking system. Based on a Gaussian cumulative distribution method, a non-parametric model, using Bell-Shaped curve method has been proposed in this study to characterize the behavior of an actual EWB mechanism. Therefore, a brake test rig has been developed to investigate the performance of the Bell-Shaped curve model. For the purpose of validation of EWB, an electronic control unit (ECU) which consists of microcontroller unit (MCU), H-Bridge driver and opto-coupler is designed to control the EWB’s pinion according to the given rotational input during the experiment. The response measured throughout the experiment is the gapping displacement of the brake piston, clamping force and also brake torque of the EWB mechanism. The responses of the actual EWB mechanism obtained from the experiment are compared with the proposed Bell-Shaped curve. The result of the study shows that the response of the Bell-Shaped curve model closely follows the response of a real EWB actuator in term of clamping force and brake torque with percentage of errors less than 10%.