Experimental Study of the Correlation between the Wear and the Braking System Efficiency of a Vehicle

The growing number of vehicles leads to increasingly intense and congested traffic, which will additionally put demand on the braking system, and drivers behave more aggressively. As a result, the braking system must be durable and efficient. For this purpose, the study of the braking system behavior in conditions of intense and moderate traffic is required to increase the safety of traffic participants—respectively, to demonstrate the need for more frequent replacement of some braking system elements. Thus, a series of successive tests were performed on a vehicle, through which the degree of wear of the brake pads and discs was monitored periodically, resulting in the efficiency evolution of the braking system. The tests were carried out both in the laboratory (on a dynamometer) and in traffic to establish the efficiency of the braking system according to some parameters considered essential. The experimental tests showed that the recommendations regarding the frequency of replacement of brake pads and discs are inconsistent with their actual wear. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to establish the braking system efficiency of a vehicle, subject to testing depending on the vehicle mass, travel speed, distance driven, and braking time, based on experimental tests, on stand and in-traffic, according to the road safety regulations. The validation of the braking system efficiency of the tested vehicle was done by measuring the stopping distance and time in relation to the initial speed, the mass of the vehicle, the number of kilometers traveled, and conditions of intense and moderate traffic.