Components
There are four main components of ABS: speed sensors, valves, a pump, and a controller.
- Speed sensors
- The anti-lock braking system needs some way of knowing when a wheel is about to lock up. The speed sensors, which are located at each wheel, or in some cases in the differential, provide this information.
- Valves
- There is a valve in the brake line of each brake controlled by the ABS. On some systems, the valve has three positions:
- In position one, the valve is open; pressure from the master cylinder is passed right through to the brake.
- In position two, the valve blocks the line, isolating that brake from the master cylinder. This prevents the pressure from rising further should the driver push the brake pedal harder.
- In position three, the valve releases some of the pressure from the brake.
- Pump
- Since the valve is able to release pressure from the brakes, there has to be some way to put that pressure back. That is what the pump does; when a valve reduces the pressure in a line, the pump is there to get the pressure back up.
- Controller
- The controller is an ECU type unit in the car which receives information from each individual wheel speed sensor, in turn if a wheel loses traction the signal is sent to the controller, the controller will then limit the brakeforce (EBD) and activate the ABS modulator which actuates the braking valves on and off.
Read more about this topic: Anti-lock Braking System
Famous quotes containing the word components:
“Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)