•ABS offers improved vehicle control and decreases stopping distances on dry
and especially slippery surfaces for many drivers, but on loose surfaces like
gravel and snow-on-pavement it can slightly increase braking distance, while still
improving vehicle control.
•Since initial widespread use in production cars, anti-lock braking systems have
evolved considerably.
•Recent versions not only prevent wheel lock under braking, but also
electronically control the front-to-rear brake bias.
How does an ABS work?
•The anti-lock brake controller is also known as the CAB (Controller
Anti-lock Brake).
ABS Components
The anti-lock braking system needs some way of knowing when a wheel is
about to lock up. The speed sensors, which are located at each wheel, or in
some cases in the differential, provide this information.
Valves
There is a valve in the brake line of each brake controlled by the ABS. On some
systems, the valve has three positions:
In position one, the valve is open; pressure from the master cylinder is passed
right through to the brake.
In position two, the valve blocks the line, isolating that brake from the master
cylinder. This prevents the pressure from rising further should the driver push
the brake pedal harder.
In position three, the valve releases some of the pressure from the brake.
Pump
Since the valve is able to release pressure from the brakes, there has to be some
way to put that pressure back. That is what the pump does; when a valve
reduces the pressure in a line, the pump is there to get the pressure back up.
Controller
The controller is an ECU type unit in the car which receives information from
each individual wheel speed sensor, in turn if a wheel looses traction the signal
is sent to the controller, the controller will then limit the brakeforce and
activate the ABS modulator which actuates the braking valves on and off.
•The ECU constantly monitors the rotational speed of each wheel.
•When it detects a wheel rotating significantly slower than the others — a condition
indicative of impending wheel lock — it actuates the valves to reduce hydraulic
pressure to the brake at the affected wheel, thus reducing the braking force on that
wheel.
•The wheel then turns faster; when the ECU detects it is turning significantly faster
than the others, brake hydraulic pressure to the wheel is increased so the braking
force is reapplied and the wheel slows.
• This process is repeated continuously, and can be detected by the driver via brake
pedal pulsation.
•Some anti-lock system can apply and release braking pressure 16 times per
second.
Vehicle dynamics and braking systems are complex and behave strongly
non-linear which causes difficulties in developing a classical controller for
ABS.
Fuzzy logic, however facilitates such system designs and improves turning
abilities.
Figure 2
The knowledge of the actual vehicle speed over ground is
vital in order to calculate wheel slips correctly.
Figure 5
The rule base consists of 35 rules altogether. To classify the
present driving condition vehicle acceleration is taken into
consideration. This should be explained for three situations:
ax corrected
Here, three linguistic values are sufficient. The output of
the estimation is derived as a weighted sum of the wheel
measurement plus the integrated and corrected
acceleration:
The Fuzzy-Controller uses two input values:
The wheel slip SB:
Wheel acceleration α:
with wheel speed vWheel and vehicle speed vFuz, which is given by
the Sensor.
The input variables are transformed into fuzzy variables slip and dvwheel/dt
by the fuzzification process.
Both variables use seven linguistic values, the slip variable is described by
the terms
slip = {zero, very small, too small, smaller than optimum, optimum, too
large, very large}
The rule base is complete that means, all 49 rules are formulated
and all 49 conditions are allowed. These rules create a nonlinear
characteristic surface as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3
Using this characteristic surface, the two fuzzy input values slip
and dvwheel/dt can be mapped to the fuzzy output value pressure.
The labels for this value are: