Theoretical analysis of self-energizing brake calipers

A theoretical analysis on the efficiency of different caliper architectures is described in the paper. The development of an electrically actuated brake caliper is of major interest for designing hybrid and electric vehicles. Electric actuation must be sufficient to generate the large braking torque required to stop the vehicle. Traditional caliper architectures are not suitable for such type of actuation due to the inadequate level of efficiency. The actuation forces required by production passenger vehicles are very large resulting in unacceptable actuation currents and layout issues due to the relevant electric actuator size. The self-energizing mechanism is an effective way to over-come this limitation and to use the electric actuation on a passenger car brake caliper. Different self-energizing calipers solutions are compared in terms of energy efficiency, actuating force, actuating stroke and, last but not least, stability. The sensitivity of the different configurations with respect to the self-energizing angle is discussed.