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An alternative to the current drum brakes, with the increased requirements of todays daily service are disc brakes, in that they offer, in contrast to the drum brakes, the following technical advantages and in turn enhance the active safety of modern commercial vehicles when braking: Enhanced brake pedal-feedback and actuation Improved efficiency Little performance losses when high thermal loads occur (fading). In order to be able to determine the improvement potential of disc brakes they will be compared to the commonly employed Simplex drum brakes. Both wheel brake systems (disc-/drum brakes and all variations) were tested on a computer controlled brake dynamometer and in field tests using a heavy duty commercial vehicle (class 8). The results are compared and conclusions drawn regarding “advantages/disadvantages”.

Given the legal requirements for quality assurance of passenger car exhaust emissions worldwide we define our quality assurance system and present the emission laboratories of the Mercedes-Benz assembly plants Sindelfingen and Bremen. We developed a hierarchically structured, multi-level computer system, which enables us to automize emission test procedures, calibration, maintenance of measurement systems and documentation of exhaust data. Test cell computers coordinate the different components of the test cells and perform maintenance and calibration of measurement devices, thus guaranteeing a high measurement quality with reasonable economy. The coordinating level computer, the emission host system (EHS), processes test parameters, controls and supervises the test sequences and evaluates the test results on a statistical basis.