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How does hydraulic braking calibration work?

Discussion in 'Gen 2 Prius Technical Discussion' started by hurricos, Aug 31, 2024.

  1. hurricos

    hurricos Junior Member

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    I've noticed sounds and motions during the transition from regenerative to hydraulic braking that suggest that the brakes are gently biting and letting go.

    I vaguely recall that there are fields in bus messages - potentially over OBD as well? - that contain a scalar "braking torque request".

    These all seem to be evidence of a numerically oriented process by which the Gen2 Prius works out how to combine these disparate systems to smoothly slow the car down.

    I spend a lot of time driving a G1 Insight, which does none of this. The Insight gets close to smooth deceleration by decreasing the amount of motor regen requested when deceleration fuel cutoff occurs, and providing non-DFCO-level regen when any brake pressure is applied, but the value the ECM to MCM for "which direction, how hard" is unitless, so the carefully curated guesswork falls apart when you adjust the sensors to increase power as we do on InsightCentral. But ultimately, the brakes are pressure-boosted by engine vacuum, and brake-driven regen is binary - the ECM targets a higher regen value if the brakes are pressed, but nothing cares "how far" - in fact, after reviewing all the brake pedals I could find, not a single IMA Honda uses a brake stroke sensor as the Prius does; they only introduced brake stroke sensors on iMMD-equipped hybrids where almost all drive torque is motor torque.

    So, obviously this problem is hard. On the motor side, it's straightforward - we already have closed-loop control over torque. But how does the Prius perform closed-loop control on the torque applied by the hydraulic braking system - are there independent sensors somehow monitoring torque applied by the brakes, or is this done by monitoring brake line pressure, or is all work done by perturb-and-observe of wheel speed? What side effects do these calibration and control strategies have, particularly in failure states (pads wearing down to different surfaces)?

    I'm also particularly interested in how an ABS BUSY signal interacts with regen braking. I have a habit of picking up my foot in my Insight when going over potholes, since the Insight's MCM will disable regen after an ABS BUSY until assist is requested again. I doubt this strategy is valid in the Prius, particularly since picking up my foot means I lose my place in the stroke and have to find it again, at the risk of engaging hydraulic brakes and wasting energy.
     
  2. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    It doesn't have any brake torque transducers. It does have brake line pressure transducers, wheel speed sensors, and a g force sensor.

    The brake actuator does have some linear solenoids in it (they don't just open/close, but can controllably open part way according to the applied current). The ECU does have a "linear solenoid offset learning" process you can trigger, where the car sits there stationary and you hear it apply and release a succession of increasing brake pressures as it learns what solenoid currents to use for each. Because the car is stationary for this, clearly it doesn't learn anything about the pad friction or resulting torques, but only fine-tunes its control of line pressures. There was a time when I didn't seem able to modulate the brakes as smoothly as I hoped, and I repeated this learning procedure and managed to convince myself I could modulate more smoothly after.

    The Prius has a very similar behavior, one that new owners perennially complain about. A disturbance like a pothole while lightly braking will occasion a shift from regen to ABS that feels, to many people, as if the car even 'leapt' ahead for that instant. I normally do nothing but to maintain or increase my pedal pressure so that I continue to slow at the rate I wanted. It's something that happens infrequently enough I'm not really concerned with how to milk the optimal MPG out of it.
     
  3. KMO

    KMO Senior Member

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    Are you potentially overthinking this? A normal car doesn't do this, so why should the Prius have to, necessarily?

    Standard braking systems just translate pedal pressure to brake pad pressure. That's it. The car's not thinking about torque. The driver provides the closed-loop control.

    Just adding regen doesn't particularly change that. Now pedal pressure leads to brake pad pressure + regen.

    Obviously this split is being performed with some view as to what torque is expected for a given pressure, but it's not critical, just as it isn't in a simple non-regen system. Because the driver's controlling it. If the combined torque is too high or low, the driver can modulate.

    Or, if an automatic driving system is in charge, then it should have the ability to cope with however the car responds to its inputs.

    Now, I'm possibly underthinking it, as part of the success of Toyota's system is how seamlessly they perform switching - the driver doesn't have to cope and compensate for clunky transitions. So there probably is quite a bit of calibration going on, but still I'm not sure it's necessarily a constant feedback loop.
     
    #3 KMO, Aug 31, 2024
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2024
  4. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Some people really worry about how breaks feel and what's going on and so on The ABS craze in the '80s started this and people have been talking about it ever since personally I never pay any mind to the brakes I don't know if they're going to work when I push on the pedal oh well I hope they do and generally they are but to be honest about it if all of a sudden I step down on the pedal and nothing happens my foot automatically goes over to the parking brake and my hand pulls b My region is always working usually I don't ever use my pads hence the 250k lasting of the brake friction material. It's real easy to stop the Prius without ever using the friction brakes I mean except right when you get to the stop sign and you got a hold then they're not wearing doing this
     
  5. hurricos

    hurricos Junior Member

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    (I'm interested in the technical aspects of it mostly because it'd be quite neat to retrofit parts into other cars.)
     
  6. mr_guy_mann

    mr_guy_mann Senior Member

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    Well, the basic wheel end hydraulic brakes on a Gen2 Prius are pretty much the same as a similar age Corolla - nothing special.

    Everything else is "where the magic happens". BUT the way the systems work, you need almost everything in order to have any of it function.

    Brakes, hybrid systems, engine, plus a bunch of other ecu's and a mile of wiring all have to be there and operating or nothing will work (at all).

    Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.
     
    #6 mr_guy_mann, Sep 2, 2024
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2024
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