Design and fabrication of hill assist braking system for heavy vehicle

Driving the heavy-duty vehicle in hilly roads is tedious for the drivers. In particularly when the vehicle is moved in gradient road during traffic condition or after parking. To overcome this issue a hill assist braking system is developed for heavy vehicle, in which the vehicle will be restricted to move backward in gradient roads. In this work ratchet and pawl mechanism is used to make the vehicle move in single direction. The ratchet is fixed in rear axle and pawl is fixed in chassis frame. On activating the proposed hill assist braking system, the pawl will be move forwarded using actuator to engage with ratchet for stopping the vehicle movement in slope. The ratchet and pawl are numerically analyzed using Ansys Workbench 16.0 for withstanding the vehicle load in slope. The FEA results shows that the proposed design is safe. The system incorporation in vehicle is discussed and it is proposed that the system will be activated by driver during the needed condition. A 1:6 scale down model is developed and tested using the scale down in a ramp. The testing result shows that vehicle is stable with respect to strength and dynamics.