SILICONE BRAKE FLUID COMPATIBILITY WITH ANTI-LOCK BRAKING SYSTEMS FOR IDENTIFYING FUTURE MILITARY BRAKE FLUID REQUIREMENTS

Since the 1980s, the US Army has been successfully utilizing silicone brake fluid (SBF) to protect military ground vehicle brake systems from corrosion in a variety of environments. Currently, the US Army is focusing its ground vehicle brake system efforts on safety by executing a hardware technology upgrade to anti-lock braking systems (ABS). SBF has been purported by many ABS manufacturers to be incompatible with ABS; however, to date no literature exist to prove these claims. Therefore, the work therein investigated these claims by testing SBF versus traditional glycol-based brake fluid in a commercial ABS utilizing a pump and dump cycle approach to simulate ABS actuation. As expected, failure of SBF was observed at 20,000 cycles, while no failure was observed for the traditional fluid. The failure of SBF was investigated and identified to be related to the lower lubricity of SBF in relation to the traditional fluid, as well as SBF incompatibility with internal ABS elastomers. This paper presents the results of these analyses, so as to help ensure a smooth transition to ABS use in military ground vehicles.