Brake system comparison for European and North-American heavy vehicles

The paper provides a detailed comparison of the brake systems that are used on European and North American Heavy Vehicles. These systems have significantly different design features. The focus of this paper is on combination vehicles although the presentation is relevant to single trucks. Brake testing was conducted on a specially modified truck-tractor that could be adjusted to model either North American or European brake characteristics. The results show that both types of truck-tractors in combination with a semi-trailer produce comparable and acceptable brake performance if the trailer has an adaptive brake system. An adaptive brake system is one that changes the brake capability on a vehicle in proportion to the load carried. In a second series of tests, the performance of the roll-stability program (RSP) systems on a truck-tractor and on its semi-trailer were investigated. Most of the safety benefits of the RSP can be obtained with RSP on the truck-tractor only, as is proposed for new North American vehicles. However, this proposal does not ensure that adaptive brakes will be used on new North American trailers. This information will be particularly important for any operator who has a mixed fleet of vehicles where both European- and North American-made vehicles are used with a shared trailer fleet. This situation occurs frequently in Australia.