Anti-lock brakes (ABS) are one of the most useful safety features invented by modern automotive engineering. The sole purpose of ABS is to prevent a vehicle’s wheels from locking when braking hard on a slippery surface or if the vehicle needs sudden manoeuvring in an emergency, by allowing the wheels to continue rotating. This feature in cars ensures the safety of drivers and prevents accidents on the road. Almost all cars and trucks made today are equipped with ABS.
Ahead, we’ll illustrate how anti-lock brakes wok? Why it is better than the conventional braking system? Furthermore, how much these systems are needed every driver on the road?
What Are Anti-Lock Brakes?
Anti-lock braking ensures that your vehicle’s wheels do not lock up and begin to skid when you brake heavily. A locked wheel means one that has stopped rotating and is starting to slide along the road. Since the tyres are no longer rotating, the traction between them and the road surface starts to fade. This can result in longer stopping distances and a loss of steering ability. In heavy rain or icy roads, these problems are magnified.
ABS would theoretically apply just enough braking to keep the wheels from locking, allowing the driver to retain steering control and remain in control of the vehicle – important during quick emergency stops, when staying in control can be the difference between avoiding and causing a collision.
How Do Anti-Lock Brakes Work?
The video describes the components and the sequence in which they operate in an anti-lock brakes system. The braking is essential to maintain stability and safety while driving. The video mentions three components of an anti-lock – braking system: a speed sensor, brake system, and computer. In this type of braking, the sequence of operations is computer initiated and managed, controlled by the pressure felt in the brake itself. The speed sensor is located at each wheel and measures its speed by detecting individual magnets within encoders. Once this data is recorded, it is sent to the brake system controller through the computer. At this point, this information is run through a program that determines if lock-up is likely to happen. The controller, if necessary, will then adjust the brake pressure to prevent lock-up and retain control over the car.
Wheel Speed Sensors: One sensor is installed on every wheel of the car so that it can sense and measure the rotation of each wheel at all times; and register when any given wheel starts to decelerate quicker than the other wheels, providing a suggestion that the wheel is going to lock up.
Electronic Control Unit (ECU): The ECU receives the information from the wheel speed sensors. If the ECU detects that one or more wheels are locking up, it sends signals to the hydraulic control unit to reduce or increase the brake pressure.
Hydraulic Modulator: The modulator supplies brake fluid pressure to the wheel. When ABS is activated, it repeatedly lowers and increases brake pressure to prevent the wheels from locking, while still maintaining braking force.
ABS, or anti-lock braking system, which: ABS Pump: when the modulator lowers brake pressure, the pump ramps it back up, so that the brakes maintain stopping characteristics without locking up the wheels.
The ABS in Action
Here’s what happens when you brake hard with ABS:
The ABS system intervenes when you step on the brake and senses that the wheels are about to lock up.
The system then pumps the brakes repeatedly, based on rapidly altering the rate of hydraulic pressure – dozens of times a second.
This is normal when ABS is working – you’ll feel a pulsating sensation on the brake pedal.
The wheels will still be spinning during this period, of course, so you can steer, which is vital in an emergency to avoid objects blocking your path.
Benefits of Anti-Lock Brakes
Anti-lock brakes in modern vehicles help save lives, many lives. With ABS, you’re less likely to lose control of your vehicle during an emergency stop because you will less likely skid. It is difficult to overstate its importance in modern driving. In more detail:
1. Enhanced Steering Control
One of the most important benefits is that drivers can maintain control of the wheel while hard braking. On cars lacking ABS, the wheels stop rotating, and the car skids when the brakes are engaged so firmly. The driver can lose control of the steering, which can end in crashes. But with ABS, the wheels continue rotation, allowing drivers to spiral around an obstacle or into the side with better odds of avoiding a smash-up.
2. Prevents Skidding
Perhaps the highest hazard that can result from wheel lockup is skidding. Once a car skids, it loses traction so that it might not be able to stop or might not be able to remain on the desired path. Anti-lock brakes reduce significantly the danger of skidding – especially on slippery road surfaces such as those from rain, ice, or snow.
3. Reduced Stopping Distance on Slippery Roads
It’s true that ABS doesn’t always achieve shorter stopping distances in the dry. But it frequently cuts stopping distances in the wet, icy or on loose surfaces, by reducing the tendency of the system to brake in a way that causes tyres to lock on a wheel, when it’s better to have some steerable contact with the road.
4. Increased Safety in Emergency Braking
Under emergency operation, the driver might slam his foot onto the bra the wheels, but ABS prevents such a thing from happening by interactively controlling the pressure system, so the driver can focus on steering out of harm’s way, not juggling the brake pedal.
5. Improved Stability During Braking
Both ABS and traction control are designed to help a car maintain better control by distributing braking force to all four wheels, instead of just to the two front wheels. Because ABS brakes allow the tyre to do some of the work of stopping a car that is being braked super hard, they let the car stop more quickly and in a straighter line than if the tyre were skidding. In that way, ABS can get rid of the fishtailing or spinouts that can occur when you brake hard while turning or on slippery roads.