The brake is what makes it possible for humans to control motor vehicles and stop quickly. For over a century, braking systems have evolved into more complex devices to adapt to different load conditions.

They are a key part of the amazing technology that is the automobile which top to break has transformed greatly over time.

Concept behind Brakes

The core concept of the vehicle braking system is simple. The object is in motion and it needs to be stopped which is in motion. Brakes use friction to decelerate. The energy is in the form of movement in the wheel. The brakes applied friction and create heat energy, Once all the movement energy is transformed into heat. Your car stops. It's not magic it's physics.

To stop you need friction. This simple concept is what almost all vehicles share in their efforts to come to a stop. Let us know how that friction is applied after the pedal is pressed.

History of First Brakes

Early first brakes were just pieces of wood. It worked, but it wasn't that great because it scraps the crap out of the wheel. The simple solution on it was to attach something to the wheel and slow it down. 

Wilhelm Maybach, in 1900 became the first car maker to put a drum on a wheel to assist the braking. Slowing down the drum meant the wheel wouldn't wear. Here's what a drum brake looks like.

Drum Brake

This drum is attached to the wheel inside of it are these two heat-resistant pads, when you press the brake pedal these pads are squeezed up against the drum. The pads slow the drum and the drum stops the wheel. 

Brake wires

Early cars used a bunch of cables and pulleys to get the pressure to the wheel from the pedal. When you push the pedal, it pulls the line, and the brake wire needed a lot of maintenance and often they snap when you needed them the most.

Another disadvantage of brake wires was the precision required. If the wire was tensioned wrong or a lever was off, the different wheels would receive different braking pressures, and that's just unsafe. 

Hydraulic Braking System

Hydraulic brakes on the other hand use pressurized fluid to push the brake. A plunger depresses in the master cylinder when you hit the pedal. And that sends the pressure through all the brake lines to all four wheels at once. Hydraulic brake lines rarely rupture, they don't require much maintenance of mechanical lines and they require very little pressure from the pedal to be effective.

By 1950, hydraulic brakes were really the only braking systems left in cars. Drum brakes were pretty good, and they were used in most of the production cars up into the '80s. However, the major drawback was that they got really hot under intense conditions with frequent braking. If they are too hot they can't change the energy of motion into heat. That's bad because that's when you need them the most.

How are Brakes made?

Let's build some better brakes. An increased coefficient means better braking. But it also means you need better cooling. One way to create more friction is with the material in the pad. Pads have to be strong enough to stop a wheel, but soft enough not to damage the drum.

Additionally, by applying more pressure we can increase the friction. Drum brake pushes out, and the brain trust-making brakes realized you can create more pressure by squeezing in. And lastly, you have to increase the surface area, a greater surface area means more friction. the best way to improve friction and avoid heat is to lose the drum, squeeze to stop, and increase the surface area so instead of a drum, they use a disc. 

How does a Disc brake work?

The disc or rotor is attached to the wheel and rides inside a caliper. The caliper (red cap) squeezes the brake pad against the rotor and the wheel comes to a stop. Disc brakes cool off better because they're not inside a drum, the air cools them. The bigger the brake and the caliper combination is more friction they can generate and the more easily they can dissipate the heat. 

Like many automotive advancements, the first Disc brakes were used in racing in Formula 1 in 1951. In 1955, Citroen was the first company to put disc brakes on production cars. They were more expensive to manufacture, but as cars became faster, disc brakes became more necessary. 

It's not that drum brakes are more dangerous because we still use drum brakes. 

The weight distribution of brakes

When a vehicle slows down its weight gets transferred mostly to the front axle. The front brake usually does about 70% of the work leaving the back brake with the lighter load. Because drum brakes are cheaper and simpler to produce and maintain most automakers use them on lighter cars on entry-level models because they are adequate. 

The rotors can have any number of tweaks to make them more effective and most of them have to do with getting rid of that heat energy. Some have a gap in the middle to let air in.

Some have fins in the gap to pull air in and some would have holes all around so that they could let air in and out all over the place. Your car's brake probably won't get above 400 degrees, Celsius which is still super hot, that would cook a pizza in 50 seconds! 

What material is used in Brake pads?

Most brake pads are made of semi-metallic material synthetic mixed with different proportions of flaked metal. Race disc brakes can reach temperatures over 1000 degrees. 

So race pads are composed of Sintered Steel without any synthetic additives, they work best at high temperatures because the demand for them is so high if you put them on your daily they are gonna squeal like heck. 

Are your brakes safe?

If your brakes squeal, that usually means you are almost out of a brake pad, manufacturers put an indicator in them so they shriek like Banshee. Even if it turns out that that's not the issue, squealing brakes means something is not right. 

It could be your brake is vibrating and not lined upright, or maybe some foreign matter got in. And that can cause massive damage in the long run. 

Ever since we started going fast, we had to look for better ways to stop, we've come a long way from just smashing wood on wheels. 

So, Appreciate your brakes because they keep you from being dead.