Adaptive position–pressure control of a brake by wire actuator for sport motorcycles

In this work the control of an electro-hydraulic brake by wire system is presented. The actuator is composed of an electric motor, a mechanical transmission, a hydraulic pump and a pipeline connected to the brake caliper. The highly nonlinear, time-varying relationship between pump piston position and plant pressure ismodelled, showing how the closed loop performances degrade without considering it. A hybrid position–pressure switching controller that aims at coping with the mentioned non-linearity is proposed. A position–pressure map estimation algorithm is introduced; this allows one to make the closed loop system robust with respect to temperature variation and brake pad wear.