Telescopic Caliper Assembly for Automotive Braking Applications 2003-01-3308
Single piston, multiple piston and opposed piston caliper designs with different diameters are in existence today catering to the increasing vehicle weight applications. Increasing piston and caliper dimensions proportional to the requirement also needs bigger actuation systems and poses packaging constraints within the available wheel sizes.
A compact Telescopic Caliper Assembly is designed and developed which can substantially increase the brake output torque for a given hydraulic input pressure or reduce the required pipeline pressure to realize the current rated torque. The Telescopic design incorporates the feature of a caliper within a caliper with pistons of different diameters positioned within the caliper housing.
Upon actuating the caliper assembly, both the pistons move forward pushing the inboard friction pad towards the rotor and the reaction force causes the inner housing (new design) to supplement the outer caliper-housing slide, thereby pushing the outboard friction pad towards the rotor. As two pistons, one within the other act simultaneously, increase of clamp load is obtained proportional to the inner piston area. Prototype samples incorporating the new design is developed and validated on inertia dynamometer. Increase of brake output torque for a given hydraulic input pressure or reduction in pipeline pressure to realize the current rated torque is realized proportional to the inner piston area.
