Hand brakes for special vehicles

A group of researchers at the Public University of Navarre, together with the Navarre-based company, Frenos Iruña S.A.L., is undertaking a project for the design and development of handbrakes aimed at specialised vehicles such as tractors, excavators or forklift trucks.

The brake control is the part that is behind the brake pedal, which we press our foot down on when we wish to brake. It involves an assembly or unit made up of master brake cylinders and servobrakes.

This part of the braking system, explains Professor Martínez Landa, is highly developed in production-line automobiles. However, this product is not generally used for OFF-HIGHWAY vehicles, such as tractors, excavators or forklift trucks. Such vehicles have special needs and normally require special brakes. They usually have integrated braking for the axle itself and require specific servobrakes.

In some cases the design of these handbrakes involves adaptations of already existing ones and, in others, by means of new designs involving a combination of hydraulic brake, vacuum servobrake and oil-filled servobrake. In short, it involves coming up with a made-to-measure product, bringing together the different technological possibilities of the vehicle. For example, currently, an oil-filled servobrake is being manufactured by Renault Agriculture where, taking advantage of the hydraulic pressure circuit as energy for the brake, a specific product has been developed.

Design of special products

A series of special products have been designed within this project, from large-sized servobrakes to very specific miniservos. The joint work is ongoing from previous projects, out of which specific products were developed, such as JCB and Massey Ferguson excavators.