Passenger Car Active Braking System: Model and experimental validation (Part I)

This paper introduces a method to characterize the dynamic behavior of a normal production hydraulic brake system through experiments on a hardware-in-the-loop test bench for both modeling (part I) and control (part II) tasks. The activity is relative to the analysis, modeling, and control of anti-lock braking system and electronic stability control digital valves, and is aimed at obtaining reference tracking and disturbance-rejection performance similar to that achievable when using pressure proportional valves. The first part of this two-part study is focused on the development of a mathematical model that emulates the pressure dynamics inside a brake caliper when the inlet valve, outlet valve, and motor pump are controlled by digital or pulse width modulated signals. The model takes into account some inherent nonlinearities of these systems, e.g. the variation of fluid bulk modulus with pressure, while inlet and outlet valves together with the relay box are modeled as second-order systems with variable gains. The hardware-in-the-loop test rig is used for both parameter estimation and model validation; the parameters and model will be used for the control strategy development presented in the second part of this study.