California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

In this project, the authors investigated the dynamics and reliability of a brake control system using a test bench which is a Lincoln Town Car brake system. The objectives of the project are to: 1) experimentally characterize the brake system; 2) obtain good nonlinear models of the brake system; 3) perform reliability analysis of the brake control system; and, 4) develop algorithms for brake malfunction detection and brake reliability enhancement. By using the brake test bench, the dynamic characteristics of the brake-actuator system are studied experimentally. Based on the experimental results, two models are obtained for the first time - one for the whole brake-actuator system, the other for the hydraulic actuator. Efficient controllers are then designed to cancel the nonlinearities in the brake system. Through extensive experiments, algorithms for the malfunction detection have been developed. Additionally, the feasibility of the brake control system to Advanced Vehicle Control Systems (AVCS) applications has been investigated.