Tuesday, August 04, 2009

WOW 25

WOW 25 - ABS

Good Afternoon Friends,
Today let us go and explore the motoring world. A section that was never touched in WOW till date. Most of us drive, the most important thing while driving is to have the control over the vehicle that you drive (i.e., to Drive and not be Driven). When the control is lost, accidents happen. Today I am going to discuss something which helps us have control over our vehicle (steer our vehicle) even when we apply brakes. That is called Anti-lock Braking System (ABS).

ABS when combined with a few other safety features like Traction Control and ESP gives us a whole lot control and improves our driving. Today I will concentrate on ABS.

When we apply our brakes, for a vehicle w/o ABS, the wheel gets locked and we will be unable to steer the vehicle just because our wheels are locked. With ABS, the wheels do get locked (to brake) but it has complete control over it. i.e., The wheels does not remain locked till the moment we take our legs off the brake pedal. The ABS controls the brake and it knows well when to slow down (lock) and when to accelerate (unlock) the wheels providing us with the ability to steer away.

A typical anti-lock system can apply and release braking pressure up to 20 times a second.

With such kind of system, we know that we always remain safe.

Check out the flash from http://www.bosch.com/assets/en/company/innovation/theme03.htm to see a graphical representation of ABS @ work.

Also check out this 53 seconds video from YouTube which demonstrates ABS @ work.

Looks like this edition of WOW turned up the enthu in a few motorists.

Danish :)

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