Longitudinal and Lateral Dynamics Evaluation of an Anti-Lock Braking System for Trail Snowmobiles

Anti-lock braking systems are one of the most important safety systems for wheeled vehicles. They reduce the braking distance and, most importantly, help the user maintain controllability and steerability of the vehicle. This paper extends and adapts the concept of Anti-lock braking systems to tracked vehicles, specifically to snowmobiles. Snowmobiles are an interesting development platform for two main reasons: 1) track dynamics, despite being analogous to tire dynamics, present important differences that help understanding the features of the control algorithm and 2) snowmobiles are simple and rugged vehicles with a limited set of sensors, making the design of an effective control system challenging. The paper designs a track-deceleration based ABS algorithm and tests it both in straight riding and cornering. The analysis shows that, on snowmobiles, Anti-lock braking systems have negligible advantages in term of stopping distance, but are beneficial in terms of steerability and stability, during cornering.