Once you have an idea about traction as it relates to motor vehicles you
will know that it can be lost sometimes during severe driving conditions. It may be just one tire, two tires
or the entire car.This is the reason for traction control.
A loss of traction can be very dangerous as it can lead to oversteer,
understeer, skidding and longer braking distances. To correct these dangers auto
manufacturers have designed and implemented several traction control devices in their vehicles.
This is a computerized system consisting of sensors and employs the use of the brakes and/or the throttle. The
brakes is not used to stop the vehicle but to assist the tires to regain its grip on the road if the system
senses a loss of traction.
The sensors in the system constantly monitors the rotation speed of the driven
wheels and compare it to the speed the vehicle is travelling If the
ECU responsible for traction control senses that a wheel is spinning to fast meaning that it has lost traction the
system will apply one of two solutions,
- Apply more braking force to the affected wheel.
- Reduce the power/torque that is sent to the wheel.
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![traction control traction control](http://www.whyhighend.com/image-files/traction-control.jpg) |
![traction control traction control](http://www.whyhighend.com/image-files/dtc-1.jpg) |
The 2nd scenario represents a car with traction control and the other image is the control in a BMW vehicle
(2nd image from www.bmw.com)
One of these 2 solutions are applied in an attempt to regain traction in that wheel as the possibility of the
wheel regaining it's grip is increased when the wheel rotates at a slower pace.
All traction control systems are not the same and systems usually apply one of the two solutions listed
above. There are systems that work together with traction control such as Anti-lock Braking System
also called ABS and there are improvements to traction control such stability control.
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