Brake wear emission model for heavy-duty vehicles

Electric vehicles cut exhaust emissions, but brake wear still releases particles, and these contribute to premature deaths. Euro 7 is the first legislation to limit brake wear emissions. Limits for passenger cars are coming, while limits for heavy-duty vehicles are still being researched. That needs data on how brake temperature, pressure and driving conditions affect wear.

We run brake tests on Chalmers' heavy-duty brake dynamometer with defined test cycles, including the new Worldwide Harmonized Heavy-duty Brake Cycle (WHBC). Wear is measured as mass loss and pad thickness, and particles are measured with a Dekati ELPI+ for both particle mass (PM) and particle number (PN).

I wrote the background, aim and methodology of the planning report and drew the method flow chart. I also wrote a script to read and analyse the rig data, measure brake pad wear with a micrometer through the test period, and learned to operate the ELPI+.

In progress. The goal is a simplified regression model that predicts brake wear emissions from temperature, speed and pressure, used to predict emissions over the WHBC and validated against measurements.