Electric Trailer Brakes, (Revisited)

sisu1a wrote:
Hi All,

By request, I am posting my electric brakes vs surge brakes article/
rambling. It is much the same info as my post on the subject before,
but written more in an article format. It is of course unfinished, but
pretty much covers my thoughts on the subject. My apologies for any
redundant redundant repetitive repetition.

You know something occured to me when I read this article. Paul talks about
using the trailer brakes only to stop the trailer from swaying. In fact, I
would think that if you hit the trailer brakes that if anything it would make
the trailer more likely to sway. Afterall, when you want to drift a car,
the easiest way to do that is to pull the emergency brake. It transfers weight
forward and off the rear wheels (on in this case the trailer wheels) and it
reduces the available traction for the tires to counter the swaying.
Admittedly, removing weight from the back end reduces the polar moment as
well.

But what did occur to me is that many new vehicles selectively apply the
brakes in order to implement stability control. It makes me wonder if you
could design a simple controller which could detect swaying and selectively
apply the brakes to counter it, either automatically or with driver
intervention.

Having towed a trailer behind a relatively light small car, I can tell you
that swaying is what freaks me out more than anything else (although inability
to stop or accelerate isn't particularly pleasant either).