Design of Hardware Architecture and Control Algorithm for the Electronic Wedge Brake

Brake-by-wire (BBW) systems can be used for enhanced safety braking of intelligent vehicles and also for environmentally friendly vehicles such as hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and electric vehicles (EVs). The electronic wedge brake (EWB) is one of the brake-by-wire systems with a self-energizing effect. The EWB is faster than the conventional hydraulic brake and requires only about one-tenth the power to operate. However, the EWB can be unstable unless controlled properly since the self-energizing effect can unintentionally lock up the vehicle’s wheels. In addition, the self-energizing effect is very sensitive to environment and parametric variances, e.g. friction, temperature, speed, load, etc. In this paper, two control algorithms for the EWB are introduced and compared each other in performance. The performance of the proposed control algorithms is verified in simulations.