Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
An Experimental Analysis of Brake Efficiency Using Four Fluids in a Drum Brake System
1Prince Owusu-Ansah, 1Timothy Alhassan, 1Justice Alex Frimpong and 2A. Agyei Agyemang
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kumasi Polytechnic, P.O. Box 854, Kumasi, Ghana
2Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2014 23:4851-4858
Received: August 12, 2013 | Accepted: November 06, 2013 | Published: June 20, 2014
Abstract
This paper studies drum brake failure in Mini-buses using an experimental analysis to test the viscosities and the maximum braking force when different fluids such as clean, less dirty, dirty and soapy water solution were used in the braking system. The effects of each of these fluids when successive increments in pedal force were applied at hot and cold conditions for drum brakes were studied. The results of the Thepra Universal Brake Testing Equipment used for the braking efficiency test indicated that a pedal force of 110 kN produce a brake force of 0.61 kN for clean fluid, 0.56 kN for less dirty, 0.51 kN for dirty and 0.92 kN. The value of 0.92 kN which was achieved when the soapy water solution was used indicated a positive braking force and that soap water solution could be used to produce a high pedal force within a very short time (10-30 min) and can therefore be used only in case of emergency. It was observed that the clean brake fluid gave the best braking force followed by the less dirty and finally the dirty brake fluid. In a situation where air has been trapped in the system under hot condition with or without a servo unit, clean brake fluid performed much better at least three times better than the other three fluids. For soap solution, braking was effective only when it was operated at cold condition but less effective when the system was hot. Soap solution is therefore not reliable when used for a very long time but effective only for emergency situations.
Keywords:
Brake failure, braking force, drum brake, efficiency, pedal force,
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Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
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