Exhaust Brake
“You cannot control the behavior of others, but you can always choose how you respond to it.”
― Roy T. Bennett
Drive a vehicle while the downhill gradient is one of the considered complication issues. In that point of situation, safety systems need to be active energetically to sweep some strains because, in case of any crisis, wheels may get unconstrained from our handlings. On moving to heavy vehicles, these necessary safety aspects had examined significantly to slow down the wheels carrying tons and tons of loads from that latitude.
Could we overcome this difficulty only by using the primary braking system of a vehicle?
As expected, we can achieve this. However, actuating the brakes frequently result in brake fading and also increases the stress level of the driver, which then leads to a lack of control. Only through primary brakes, these difficulties might not get rectified. So additional existences had inbuilt in vehicles to overcome this crisis. One of those existences in heavy vehicles is an Exhaust brake system. This type of braking system had used as an auxiliary brake in diesel trucks carrying heavy loads.
Here we explore an electrically governed exhaust brake system. Construction-wise simple to figure out this system. The main component is a butterfly valve, which has placed in the exhaust pipe after the turbocharger. This butterfly valve operated using a pneumatic servo cylinder. Pressure sensors are placed in the exhaust pipe to detect the pressure built inside the passage during this actuation. A proportionating valve is adopted to manage the actuation of a pneumatic cylinder depending on the back pressure established. Overall triggering of this system has supervised with the assistance of Engine Monitoring System. We can employ this system only if required, or else it remains disabled.
While the vehicle gets enabled with this braking system, at the time of downgrade or high-speed conditions, when the driver takes away the foot from the accelerator pedal to hold down the speed, soon after this braking process gets active. Typically after releasing the accelerator pedal, the fuel supply gets cut down. The engine monitoring system receives the data about the fuel cut-down and instantly actuates the butterfly valve via pneumatic cylinders. This butterfly valve is turned to certain degrees to resist the exhaust gas comes out from the combustion chamber, which then leads to creating pressure inside the exhaust pipe. If the pressure reaches furthermore will cause back pressure in the exhaust valve. Once the exhaust valve gets opened, the built back pressure tried to intrude into the combustion chamber, which opposes the moment of the piston and resists the motion of the rotating components inside the engine and drive-line, then decreases the speed of the vehicle gradually. You may hear some murmuring the sound of the diesel engine while decelerating from high-speeds. So this technique achieves to slow down the wheels efficiently.
While the back pressure attains peak value, this may rupture the engine components right! Then how could we get benefited by using this mechanism?
For rectifying this issue, pressure sensors fixed inside the pipe will observe the built back pressure and sends the data to the engine monitoring system. This system analyses the set pressure value if the attained pressure is more than that, it operates pneumatic cylinders using a proportionating valve to open the butterfly valve partially to maintain the limited back pressure in the engine to avoid damages. (i.e.) if the pressure reaches a peak value, the butterfly valve releases the excess pressure developed inside the exhaust pipe. This process takes place till the wheels get slow down.
However, the exhaust brake system cannot stop the vehicle like service brakes. It has just enabled to decrease the braking effort at the time of decelerating, which may slow down the speed of the wheels slowly. This braking increases the performance of the vehicle and fuel efficiency too.
DROP A COMMENT IF IT IS INFORMATIVE!
0 Comments