A Brake hose is a core part of the braking system that delivers the hydraulic pressure generated in the master cylinder to an actuator, which, in turns, creates braking force. The braking hose can be deformed in many different ways under various driving conditions, and it is essential that the brake hose should not experience any excessive deformation or interference with surrounding parts for durability and reliability. Despite of its importance, the brake hose design method has been very limited. Currently, it is tentatively designed with simple curves, such as a spline curve, then tested and modified with many different prototypes by doing a trial-and-error process due to the difficulty in simulating the behavior of the hose.
This paper focuses on establishing the following processes to enhance the reliability of the drawing in the earlier stage of the vehicle development by a prompt and accurate simulation prediction; (1) Facilitating the design and modification of the hose path by developing a CAD template for the brake hose and fitting, (2) Coordinates of Body Fitting & Axle Fitting are extracted and calculated in order to create input data for a CAE software to perform a deformation analysis of brake hoses associated with the vehicle motion. The obtained CAE results are then converted into a CAD 3D model and used to check the interference with surrounding parts.
The whole process is dedicated to two main objectives; the usability and reliability. Firstly, a unified GUI is developed to handle a data extraction, pre/post processing, 3D model generation, and interference check. Therefore, it allows even inexperienced engineers to easily get the analysis results and use it in the CAD environment. Secondly, by incorporating the beam cross-section model into the analysis, twist of a hose can be considered. The results are compared with the 3D scanning data of the hose installed in the actual vehicle for verification.
The proposed processes and program can significantly decrease the computing time and increase the accuracy of the simulation for the presented example problems.