The Effect of Different Tyres on the Performance of an Anti-lock Braking System for Continuous Modulation Actuators

The Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) plays a role of paramount importance in the safety of ground-wheeled vehicles. It prevents the wheels from locking up during panic braking maneuvers, minimizing the braking distance while ensuring vehicle driveability. Recent technological advancements involving the braking actuation unit ofer the opportunity for enhancing traditional braking active safety systems. This work proposes an analysis - from a controller designer perspective - focused on how the tyre characteristics (compound, geometry, infation pressure, temperature, wear) affect the performance of a state-of-the-art ABS for continuous modulation braking actuators, with the objective of determining how the latter can be improved by adapting the control logic parameters according to the tyre mounted. To this aim, an experimental campaign is carried out to identify the friction characteristics of a heterogeneous set of tyres that can be mounted on a passenger car; the resulting friction curves are then used in a high-fidelity simulation environment (VI-grade CarRealTime) to develop a tyre-adaptive and a standard versions of the aforementioned logic. The braking performance is then compared in panic braking maneuver scenarios exploiting suitable key performance indicators.