Fuzzy Control for the Anti-lock Brake System

Chih-Keng Chen* and Yu-Chi Wang

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Da-Yeh Institute of Technology
112, Shun-Jeau RD., Dah-Tshuen, Chang-Hwa, SOS, Taiwan
In this paper, we develop the fuzzy controller for an ABS(anti4ock braking system).
The system models of the ABS and the fuzzy controller structure are discussed.
Computer simulations are given to understand the effect of some important parameters.

Key Word: Fuzzy control, Anti-lock brake system, Hydraulic braking system
1. Introduction
Recently, the ABS (Anti-Lock Brake Systems) are gradually accepted as a standard
equipment used in vehicles. ABS is a device that can prevent the lock-up of car wheels
during the emergency braking. It can keep the maneuverability when the vehicle is turning
since the tire-road slip is controlled in an acceptable range. By maintaining the maximal
frictional force during braking, ABS can reduce the braking distance.
Since the popularity and the commercial value of ABS, it attracts a lot of researchers
in this area. One of the interesting topic is the control algorithm development for ABS. Yeh
have adopted phase-locked loop control scheme to investigate ABS[9]. Sergey provided the
control design for ABS via the sliding mode approach [I]. Jeffery and Kevin use the fuzzy
model reference learning control technique [5] for maintaining adequate performance even
under adverse road condition. Other researchers have also done the intensive works control
wheel slip of ABS [4][6][8]. Georg [3] adapt the braking-oil pressure in the changing road
conditions in real time.
In this paper, we intend to develop a fuzzy controller for the anti-lock brake system.
Also, we will change some of the important parameters in the system and obtain the
simulation results. Based on the results, some design principles are developed. In Section 2,
we list the mathematical models for the braking dynamics. They include the tire force model,
the vehicle dynamics and the model for the brake-hydraulic system. In Section 3, we develop
a fuzzy controller for the ABS in Section 2. In Section 4, we use the software Simulink to
build the simulation block for the full ABS control system and also provide simulation
results and discussions. At the last section, we give the conclusions.

2. Development of ABS Model

(a). Tire Force Model
The forces on a vehicle tire generally include normal load, longitudinal force(or
braking force) and lateral force as shown in Fig. l(a). The normal tire force will affect the
longitudinal force by the normal frictional coefficient. The longitudinal tire force is related
to the braking force and, thus, determines the stopping distance. The lateral force will control
the maneuverability and the stability as the vehicle is steering to change its direction.
Therefore, the ABS must control the longitudinal and lateral forces on the tire in an
appropriate range to keep the braking distance as short as possible while the maneuverability
of the vehicle is still controlled.
*Correspondence addressee.

0-78083687-9/96@1996 IEEE 67

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 ~ css CAS
wilel-<- '4
I-s 1-s 2
F, = <
.(Brakmg force) F, (Lateral force) F, CSS '4
(a) (b)

p = & a(- pN;o(y)

where Po is the nominal friction coefficient at zero velocity, and PNG stands for percent
normalized gradient which depends on the root mean square texture height of the road.
In equations (1) and (2), the slip S is defined as the following equation:
(V - Rw)
S= ( 3 )
V
where V is the vehicle speed, R is the rolling radius of wheel, W is the angular velocity of
wheel. When S=0, it means that the wheel is in full rolling without slip. If S=l, the wheel is
locked-up, i.e. cc)=0 and is in full sliding. In most braking situation, the slip value S is
between 0 and 1 and it is shown that the wheel is in both rolling and sliding.
(b) Model of vehicle dynamics
By neglecting the air resistance and the suspension dynamics during the braking
operation A simplified mathematical model of single-wheel vehicle is adopted. The
equations of motion of the vehicle, including translation and rotation, are derived from the
single-wheel free body diagram in Fig I(b) as the following.
MV=-Fx , Ih=RFx-T, ( 4 )
where M is the vehicle mass, I represents the moment of inertia of the wheel, and Tb
represents the braking torque applied to the wheel.
(e) Model of the brake hydraulic dynamics
The hydraulic brake system discussed here has the structure as shown in Fig. 2 [l].
There are two valves in this system: build and dump valves. They are on-off type solenoid
valves, and can only be in two positions. close or open. If the build valve is close and the
dump valve is open, the pressure decreases due to the fluid flow to reservoir.
The pressure created by the pump is transferred to the wheel cylinder only when the
build valve is open and the dump valve is closed. The case when both valves are open is not
allowed The model of the brake hydraulic system dynamics used here is[ 11
( 5 )
I dt

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 Dump wheel cylinder side. The coefficients cdl and
Force Pump
0 Valve
CK Cd2 are the control inputs which can take the
value 0 or 1 depending on the corresponding

1(1 - S)F,
where T , = R F , + M R is defined as the equilibrium braking torque. When
Tb=Te, we can get 4 = 0 , that is, the slip S is a constant. Therefore, the design object for
an anti-lock brake system is to keep the braking torque Tb around the best equilibrium
braking torque and, at that constant slip, the frictional force F, in (1) is maximal.

3. Fuzzy Controller for Anti-Lock Brake System

The fuzzy logic system has recently gained recognition as an effective approach for
quick controller development, especially for higher-order, nonlinear time-variant systems.
As we can see in the previous section, the model of ABS is highly nonlinear. In this section,
we will develop the ABS controller by using the fuzzy logic concept.
In previous works, many researchers directly use slip as the control variable. From
equation (3), this means that both the wheel angular velocity w and the vehicle velocity V
should be available for feedback. In real implementation, w is easy to obtain by the rotary
speed sensor, however, the absolute vehicle speed is not easy to measure during the braking
period. In [7], even the Doppler sensors are used for this purpose.
If the slip is available, we can intuitively list the following rules. When the slip
between wheel and road is large, it means that the lock-up of wheels is going to happen and
the controller should reduce the braking torque. When the wheel restore the rolling situation
during the brake, it should increase the braking torque to stop the car.
In our fuzzy controller design, we choose the oil pressure difference AP, the wheel
angular velocity w and the wheel acceleration U as the input variables. In this way, we can
keep away from the feedback problem of slip. In fact, from the information of wheel speed

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 and acceleration, the status of vehicle braking can be understood and controlled.
From the system configuration in Fig. 2, we can change the pressure on the hydraulic
braking system through the valve control. Therefore, the ABS fuzzy controller output is the
electric odoff command to the two valves. The fuzzy control rules are then developed as
shown in Table 1. These rulers can avoid the lock-up of wheels during the braking operation.
In the tables, INC express the electric command to open the build valve and close the dump
valve and DEC reverse the operation of INC, i.e. close build valve and open dump valve.
Table 1. The rule table for the fuzzy controller
(l).pressure mode is increasing (U> 0 ) (2).pressure mode is decreasing (Ui0 )

The membership function for wheel angular velocity w and wheel angular
acceleration b are shown in Fig.3(a) and (b), and the number of membership functions for
each of w and h are five. The rule tables are different for the different pressure mode as
shown in Table 1 and its membership function is listed in Fig.3(c). The output variable of
fuzzy controller is the odoff command and its membership is shown in Fig.3(d). In this
study, we use the Mamdani method for the fuzzy inference.

4. Computer Simulation
In this research, we use the software Simulink to build the whole anti-lock brake
system and its fuzzy controller. The mathematical models discussed in Section 2 are
converted into the block diagrams in Simulink as shown in Fig. 4.In this way, we can easily
construct the system models. The
'Fuzzy Logic Tool Box' in Matlab
is utilized to build the fuzzy
controller as discussed in Section 3.
There are three main blocks in the
system. Each block includes several
equations from Section 2 and is
separately described in the
following.
a. ABS Fuzzy Controller
The inputs of this fuzzy
controller are the wheel speed w ,
V a l v e o p e r a t i o n , C, wheel acceleration io and the
(d)
pressure difference Ap . Through
Fig. 3 Membership function of (a). the wheel the inference system discussed
angular velocity w (b).the wheel acceleration U j in Section 3, the Output is
( c ) . t h e p r e s s u r e m o d e & ( d ) . t h e f u z z y Obtained in the form Of the Omoff
signal to the solenoid valves in the
output
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 hydraulic braking circuit. Here, we use C, as the controller output. When C, is positive, the
build valve is on and the dump valve is off. With the negative C, the dump valve is on and
the build valve is off.
b. Hydraulic Braking System
In this block, it mainly includes equation ( 5 ) and (6). With the valve control signal
from the fuzzy controller, this block computes the oil pressure in the braking circuit. In
addition, the braking torque Tb and the pressure difference Ap are obtained as the output.
c. Vehicle Dynamics
This block contains two major subsystems: the slip equation (7) and the vehicle
dynamics (4). We can see that both equations involve the tire-road braking force F, in (1)
and the friction coefficient model (2). The input to this block is the braking torque Tb and its
outputs are w and h. To simplify the model, we rewrite equation (5), and define the build
coefficient Si=Al/Cfand the dump coefficient &=A2/cf for the system. The two parameters
represent the dimensional effects, i.e. A 1
and A2, of both control valves.
By varying the values of Si and &, we
can have the different results of ABS. In
ABS fuzzy Hydraulic brake our simulation, we use the parameters listed
controller dynamics in Table 2 and discuss results in the
following three cases:
Fig. 4 Configuration of the ABS control Case?: When the build coefficient Si is
Table 2.Svstem uarameters fixed as 3 and three different dump
coefficient Sd: 120,150 and 200 are used,
Parameters Value
the simulation results are shown in Fig.5.
Pump pressure (Pp) 6000 kpa We can see that when Sd is increased, it will
Moment of inertia ( I ) 1.6 kg-m take longer time to brake the vehicle. Since
the larger Sd means larger dump valve
Radius of wheel (R)
dimension, it will results in the abrupt drop
Mass of the vehicle (n/r) in the oil pressure of the brake system when
Mechanical efficiency ( 77) 0.8 the dump valve is on. Thus, the braking
0.8 torque is reduced to make the braking time
Brake factor (BF)
longer.
Effective rotor radius (rr) 0.134 m Case 2: When the dump coefficient Sd is
Maximal vehicle speed ( V ) 25 m / s fixed as 200 and three different build
PNG 3.6 s/m coefficient Si: 3, 4 and 6 are used, Fig.6
shows the simulation results. In the figure,
Tire longitudinal stiffness (C,) 21 168 N we can see that, as Si is increased, the
vehicle will be stopped in a shorter period of time and the braking torque is raised more
easily. However, if the Si is not chosen appropriately, it will increase the slip and even cause
the lock-up of wheel.
Case3: In this case, we fix Si as 5 and Sd as 200, and use three different ranges of h for
the fuzzy controller: [-loo, 1001, [-200, 2001 and [-300, 3001. The simulation results
are shown in Fig.7. The change of the input range will affect the control sensitivity. In the
figure, we can find that the larger range results in the less sensitivity to fire the rule. This can
delay the operation of the controller and, thus, increase the slip. The results point out that Si
and Sd must be chosen carefully to produce the reasonable braking operation. And, for

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different valves, the controller parameters should be tuned to avoid the lock-up of wheel.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, we develop
the fuzzy controller for an anti-
lock braking system. We have
0
derived the systems mathematical
Slip
models: vehicle dynamics, tire
Fig. 5 The simulation result for Si=3,and force and the brake hydraulic
Sd=120,150,200 system. The fuzzy controller
structure is given and discussed.
By using the software Simulink
and Fuzzy logic toolbox, the
- r ~i
-1-1- simulation block of ABS control
system is built. In the computer
Time Slip
simulation, we change the
Fig. 6 The simulation result for Sd=200,and Si=3,4,6 parameters related to real hardware
and tune the ABS fuzzy controller.
The simulation results are shown
and discussed in this paper and
could be used for the further
design. More practical experiments
should be done for verification in
Fig. 7 The simulation for Sd=200,and S i 4 the range the future.
of wheel acceleration is [-lo0 1001, [-200
2001, [-300 3001

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