Advanced Brake Force Distribution and Pad Wear Life Integration in Supervisory Electronic Brake Control System for Combination Vehicles

Abstract

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">Commercial vehicle fleets frequently operate with tractors that connect to different trailers and dollies, resulting in combinations with varying brake pad wear across wheel ends. Traditional brake-force distribution strategies do not consider these pad-life differences, which can lead to uneven brake utilization, irregular maintenance intervals, and increased total cost of ownership (TCO) in mixed-trailer operations [<span class="xref">7</span>, <span class="xref">9</span>]. While modern electronically controlled braking systems (EBS) already incorporate pad wear based braking for the tractor itself [<span class="xref">5</span>], these capabilities do not extend across the entire vehicle combination because trailer-side communication is typically limited to standardized CAN protocols such as ISO 11992 and J1939 [<span class="xref">1</span>, <span class="xref">2</span>, <span class="xref">3</span>]. As braking systems become more software defined and rely heavily on distributed electronic communication, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of trailer originated brake information becomes essential for both functional safety and cybersecurity [<span class="xref">6</span>].</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">In the proposed architecture, trailers and dollies communicate brake related data to the tractor over the ISO 11992 Tractor-Trailer CAN (TT-CAN) network [<span class="xref">1</span>, <span class="xref">2</span>], allowing the tractor Brake Control ECU to securely validate the source of the information and register each towed unit for health aware braking. Once authenticated pad life data is available, the tractor constructs a combination level brake health map covering every wheel end in the configuration. During normal braking, a supervisory allocator computes wheel end specific brake pressure targets that bias braking toward wheel ends with greater remaining pad life while ensuring full compliance with stopping distance regulations and stability requirements [<span class="xref">4</span>, <span class="xref">7</span>]. By integrating authenticated pad wear information with tractor hosted supervisory control, the system improves braking consistency across mixed combinations, harmonizes pad utilization, enhances maintenance predictability, and reduces TCO while meeting the safety and cybersecurity expectations of modern commercial vehicle fleets.</div></div>