Patents by Inventor Bernhard Topfer

Bernhard Topfer has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 5409301
    Abstract: A method is provided to determine an optimized value of the brake pressure ratio between a tractor and a trailer or semitrailer. In particular, an increased value of the brake pressure of the trailer or semitrailer in relation to the brake pressure resulting from the position of the brake pedal is supplied for a particular duration at the beginning of a braking operation. The increase of the brake pressure of the trailer or semitrailer takes place as a function of the brake pressure, p.sub.Anh, resulting from the position of the brake pedal. In braking operations when a tractor is travelling without a trailer or semitrailer, an allocation of the achieved deceleration, z.sub.ist, to the brake pressure p.sub.Zug of the tractor is stored as a function of the load state of the tractor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 4, 1992
    Date of Patent: April 25, 1995
    Assignee: Mercedes-Benz AG
    Inventors: Bernhard Topfer, Bodo Klein, Wolfgang Muller
  • Patent number: 5375452
    Abstract: A method is described for determining the wheel speed during braking of a vehicle having in addition to at least one wheel with speed sensor at least one further wheel without speed sensor and means for determining the braking pressure. For this purpose, the braking operation is subdivided into several time intervals during which the relative value from the braking energy and the kinetic energy of the vehicle are obtained, and the contribution of the wheels without speed sensors to the braking energy is defined during a first time interval. Furthermore, the ratio of the relative value in this time interval to the relative values in further time intervals is formed, and the mean value for the wheel speed of all wheels without speed sensors is ascertained in the further time intervals from the ratio of the relative values.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 25, 1993
    Date of Patent: December 27, 1994
    Assignees: Temic Telefunken microelectronic GmbH, Mercedes-Benz AG
    Inventors: Reinhard Helldorfer, Gerhard Hettich, Matthias Gramann, Jurgen Leuteritz, Bernhard Topfer
  • Patent number: 5344222
    Abstract: A method is described for determining brake coefficients, which define the relationship between the brake pressure and the brake force at a wheel or axle of a motor vehicle or of a section of a vehicle combination during the braking operation of the vehicle or vehicle combination. During the braking operation of vehicle, the wheel speed and the brake pressure are determined measurement/time intervals with differing brake pressure distribution between the wheels, axles or vehicle sections are formed, in which the equilibrium of forces between the brake force and the force of inertia of the motor vehicle is obtained.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 23, 1993
    Date of Patent: September 6, 1994
    Assignees: Temic Telefunken microelectronic GmbH, Mercedes-Benz Aktiengesellschaft
    Inventors: Reinhard Helldorfer, Jurgen Leuteritz, Matthias Gramann, Bernhard Topfer
  • Patent number: 5333940
    Abstract: A brake pressure regulation method and system for a trailer vehicle, which is connected to a tractor vehicle having an electronically controlled pressure-medium brake renders sensing of the forces between the tractor and the trailer vehicle and, to this extent, also a corresponding force-recording apparatus superfluous. The method can be used advantageously in tractor vehicles equipped with an ABS. The method is based on transmission of wheel speed signals from the trailer vehicle to the tractor vehicle and brings about an adjustment of the brake pressure relation between the tractor and the trailer vehicle to the same average speed of the wheels of non-driven axles of the vehicle by correcting the brake pressure for the trailer vehicle adaptively to give braking work which can be distributed in optimum fashion to the tractor vehicle and the trailer vehicle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 14, 1992
    Date of Patent: August 2, 1994
    Assignee: Mercedes-Benz AG
    Inventor: Bernhard Topfer
  • Patent number: 5163742
    Abstract: A method utilizes components of an existing anti-lock brake system (ABS) in order thereby to achieve an automatically self-optimizing inter-axle brake-pressure distribution acting far below the wheel lock limit. For this purpose, the brake pressure and, hence, the brake-force distribution are regulated axle-specifically far below the wheel lock limit too. An immediate dynamic intervention is, on one hand, effected in the case of sufficiently large wheel-speed differences between the axles. On the other hand, an adaptive predetermination of correct brake-force distributions is made the basis for each current regulating intervention. Even before the occurrence of large speed differences, the brake-force distribution expedient in each case for these is here predictively determined, stored, and, if required, correspondingly adapted to current requirements, i.e. corrected, in the course of subsequent dynamic braking demands.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 8, 1991
    Date of Patent: November 17, 1992
    Assignee: Mercedes-Benz AG
    Inventors: Bernhard Topfer, Norman Millner, Ali Aminpour, Wolfgang Scheer