Improvement of braking system towards maintaining constant brake pedal feel during vehicle deceleration

Brake pedal feel is an important realization based on which effective braking of a vehicle can be performed. For safe and stable braking, the pedal feel is required to be consistent during the entire deceleration period. However, many factors including the speed change affect the brake pedal feel. In this work, an improvement to the existing friction brake system is presented to obtain a constant brake pedal feel (in terms of deceleration per unit pedal displacement) during the entire braking period. A hydro-mechanical system is considered for demonstration. A control system is designed for the improved braking system, and the vehicle drive during braking is modelled. The system effectiveness towards obtaining constant brake pedal feel is investigated by analysing the displacement variations of different system components obtained through vehicle drive model simulation. A comparative analysis based on experiencing jerk during braking establishes the efficacy of the proposed improvement over conventional friction brake.