Abstract
Brake pedal feeling has recently become increasingly important since high volume markets, such as China and India, are becoming more demanding. Furthermore, costs are also a key point when designing and improving a vehicle and reducing them is a priority. In this paper, the improvement of a vehicle with brake pedal feeling complaints, using a robust procedure that uses 1D simulation tools with the aim of reducing the cost, is presented. The methodology is divided into three different phases. The first phase consists on a benchmarking activity of different competitor vehicles and the Vehicle under study, evaluating braking performance, braking regulation results, brake pedal feeling and component sizing. The second phase consists of identifying the differences and the gap analysis of the vehicle pedal feeling when compared with the competitor vehicles and finding out ways to improve it by using the 1D simulation tool, checking that the changes would meet the regulation requirements. The output from this phase is a selection of different braking components off the shelf, to keep costs low and get short lead times, which would improve brake pedal feeling. The third phase consists of testing the new components in order to check the pedal feel improvements and that the Vehicle under study still meets the regulation requirements. This paper presents some results, but not all, for confidentiality reasons from the subjective and objective evaluations of brake pedal feeling from each of the different phases as well as the brake regulation test results. IDIADA’s procedure for improving brake pedal feeling by using off the shelf components and reducing vehicle testing as much as possible. The only parts that can be changed to improve the brake pedal feeling are very limited and the Vehicle under study is very close to the boundary values of the brake regulation requirements, making this project difficult and very challenging. The procedure explained in this paper to improve the brake pedal feeling succeeds in reducing the test iterations and in using off-the-shelf components. This procedure includes very well correlated 1D simulation tools to reduce vehicle testing as much as possible. New procedure for improving the brake pedal feeling has been developed, reducing time and cost and successfully improving the brake pedal feeling of the vehicle under test.