AUXILIARY BRAKING SYSTEM FOR VEHICLE WHEELS
DESCRIPTION
The invention refers to a complementary braking system, designed specifically for vehicle wheels in order to achieve faster braking and immobilization. It should be noted that the current braking systems regard a wheel as a unified body, which renders the fast immobilization of a vehicle difficult.
According to our approach, the wheel is "divided" into two sections, i.e.
(a) the tyre section and
(b) the rim section The rim and its collaborating parts (i.e. brake discs, articulations, axles, drive shafts etc) that rotate with the rim have a significant overall mass and, as they rotate, they create a moment of inertia which contributes to the kinetic energy of the wheel and, by extension, to the kinetic energy of the vehicle itself. If this moment of inertia could be neutralized, the remainder of the wheel (i.e. the tyre section) would be immobilized more easily, and thus the vehicle could be stopped faster. The advantage of the invention, compared to known braking systems, is in addressing the aforementioned problem.
According to our method, as we show in Figure 1 , the tyre section ( 1 ,2) is connected to the rim section (4) with a big roller bearing (3). For clarification, part 2 of Figure 1, namely the metallic cylinder which is tangential to the tyre, is depicted in Figure 2.
As it is evident from the above, the rim can rotate independently from the tyre. Consequently, if during the braking of the vehicle only the tyre section could brake, while the rim section and its collaborating parts (i.e. brake disks, articulations, axles, drive shafts etc) were rotating "on the air", the corresponding overall moment of inertia Θπm, would 1 create a rotational kinetic energy equal to — • 0 rιm - ω2 which should not be added to the kinetic energy of the tyre section, as it does not influence its movement. The kinetic energy of the tyre section will be:
Hence, the braking of the wheel will be restricted to the barrage of the kinetic energy of the tyre section only and not of (the kinetic energy of) the entire wheel: ^- m^e - u2 +- - Θtyre - ω2 + - - mπm - υ2 + - - Θπm - co2
In this case, the brake disk must be adapted (embedded) into the tyre section instead of the rotation axle that we have included in the rim section.
The question is how the rim section can at (the vehicle driver's) will: ,. i) clutch (interlock) the tyre section and rotate together thereafter as a "single body" during the movement of the vehicle, and ii) release (declutch) the tyre section during braking, so that only the tyre section brakes while the rim section "rotates on the air". This can be realized by the following clutching system of the two sections (i.e. the tyre and the rim section) as depicted in Figure 3. Similarly with the outer ring of the roller bearing, a concave gear (5) (namely the gear having
internal teeth instead of external ones) is embedded into the metallic cylinder (2) that is tangential to the tyre.
There is also a cross having hydraulic extendable/retractable (fluctuating) pistons (6). The interior part (7) of the cross is embedded together with the rim's spokes (4) so that when the cross is rotating, the interior part of the rim is rotating (see Fig. 4 -(4)) in the same manner so that their relative positions to the tyre section are identical.
The pistons have gear (dentate) ends (see Fig. 5-(8)), so as to be clutched (interlocked) with the peripheral concave gear when they extend, while the pistons are declutched (from the concave gear) when they retract. Figure 6 shows separately the clutching system, while Figures 7 and 8 show its fluctuating ends.
In a few words, when the vehicle moves, the cross and the (embedded with it) interior part of the rim rotate as a single body, together with the tyre section, having clutched the latter through the peripheral concave gear. When braking, in turn, the cross with the interior part of the rim embedded thereon declutch the peripheral concave gear, allowing thus the rim section to "rotate on the air" and the tyre section to assume the retarding-immobilization of the vehicle.
In Figure 7, the cross tends to declutch the concave gear (and thus the tyre section as well) so as to brake the vehicle. In Figure 8, the cross tends to clutch (interlock) the concave gear (and thus the tyre section as well) letting thereby the vehicle to move normally.
In the following, the retarding-immobilization of the vehicle is performed as shown in Figure
9 via a brake disk (10) embedded (11) into the tyre section (specifically into the metallic cylinder (2) that is tangential to the tyre). The (stable) "bridge" (9) supporting contact pads is embedded into a "carrier", which is independent of the rotation of the wheel. That "carrier" in turn should be supported by the known classical mode. All these systems are depicted together in Figure 10.
It should be noted that when the rim system is rotating "on the air" during the vehicle's braking, can be stopped by a classic configuration of a second disk brake, whose disk is embedded into the interior part of the rim (Fig. 4-(4)). Apparently, this configuration of the second disk brake in the rim section -whose (i.e. the section's) mass is substantially smaller than the vehicle's mass- will stop it faster than the proposed system would stop the vehicle.
This is not an innovation hence we shall not elaborate on it any more.
Below there are some other aspects of the configurations:
Figure 11 depicts the stereoscopic view of the interior of the rim section (4) inserted into the roller bearing (3) and embedded into its inner ring (Fig. 12).
Figure 13 depicts stereoscopically the three (sub)systems, one after another and each one separately, before being assembled into a single system (Fig.14).
In Figure 15, we can see the tyre section (from a rear viewpoint for a complete representation) and, in Figure 16, the rim section.
The collaborating parts of the rim section (e.g. axles, drive shafts articulations, etc) are not depicted in Figure 16 which refers to the rim section. Figures 17 and 18 depict the outside front and rear views of the system respectively, into the metallic cylinder that is tangential to the tyre.
Figure 19 depicts the side view of the system, on the left separately and on the right through a cross section of the metallic cylinder that is tangential to the tyre.
Figure 20 depicts stereoscopically a front-side view of the system through a cross section of the metallic cylinder that is tangential to the tyre.