How anti-lock braking system prevents the risk of sliding?
Answers
Anti-lock braking system (ABS) helps cars to stop on slippery surfaces in emergency situations while still allowing them to be steered.
Often when a driver must stop their car suddenly and quickly to avoid a collision, they will stomp hard on the brake pedal in a panicked attempt to prevent the collision.
When they do this the brakes can lock the wheels, not only slowing them but holding them firmly in place. When this happens, the wheels will lose traction with the road and simply slide.
The driver will not be able to steer to avoid the obstacle as the tires cannot grip the road to turn the car. When this occurs, cars can spin out of control and crash. ABS helps cars to stop smoothly and quickly in these situations.
When a driver slams on the brakes and the tires begin to lock up and lose their grip on the road, friction between the tires and the road decreases.
This is because when your wheels are rolling along the road, they constantly have to push against the ground in order to speed you up or slow you down.
They are working against static friction to keep you in motion. When your wheels are sliding over the road they are simply continuing the motion that has already been started.
The friction that is slowing them down is called kinetic friction. It takes less force to keep an object in motion than it does to start it going because static friction is greater than kinetic friction.
This means that because the rolling tires interact with static friction and the sliding ones with kinetic friction, more friction will be exerted on the rolling tires than the sliding ones and therefore a car with rolling wheels will stop more quickly than a car with sliding ones.
That is why when a car's wheels lock up and it slides along the road, it takes it a large distance to stop.
ABS makes it so that the wheels of a car do not lock and slide when the driver slams on the brakes for an emergency stop.
That way the car will stop more quickly due to a larger amount of friction. It does this via a network of sensors and pistons. When the sensors detect that the wheels have begun to lock, the pistons release the brakes a little until the wheel has begun to accelerate once more. Once the wheel has begun to accelerate again, the brakes are re-applied.
ABS pulses the brakes in this manner to keep static friction in play rather than the weaker force of kinetic friction, thus stopping the car more quickly than it would with locked wheels.
ABS also brings with it the added bonus of being able to steer while braking. Because the wheels maintain friction with the road, they are able to respond when the driver turns the wheel and the car can be turned like normal.