Haldex delivers advanced brake calculations as agricultural trailer regulations tighten

Agricultural trailer manufacturers are facing more stringent European regulations for braking systems than ever before, meaning that getting brake calculations right has never been more consequential or more complex. Haldex’s cloud-based BrakeIt Online platform has been developed to meet exactly this challenge, helping manufacturers accelerate development cycles while ensuring full compliance with the latest standards.

New European regulations for agricultural trailers, which began to be phased in at the start of 2016, are now in force in full across the industry. The regulations are needed to ensure safety as the size and power of agricultural equipment grows.

New tractors are delivering greater power and payload capacities than ever before, while operating speeds have risen from the traditional 25km/h limit to 40km/h and beyond. These changes have substantially increased the safety demands placed on trailer braking systems.

"The designers are aware of this. As machines grow, it's becoming more of a challenge to get the brakes right,” says Siegfried Heer, senior commercial product manager, air controls at Haldex. “If a trailer brake is too weak, or the communication is poor, then there might be a safety risk."

Haldex has long provided brake calculations for both road and agricultural vehicles, but with the new demands on designs, it is now providing new, more advanced brake calculation tools to assist OEMs in the extended process.

A cloud database built for today's complexity

BrakeIt Online replaces a legacy desktop software tool that had remained largely unchanged for around two decades. The new platform moves the underlying component database to the cloud, meaning that when new brake components or axle data are added by Haldex engineers, they become immediately available to all users.

The step-by-step visual interface provides real-time feedback on whether a given configuration meets regulatory requirements, with automated compliance checks that prevent an out-of-specification calculation from being completed. “If it’s inside the limits and it’s allowed, then you can do it. If it’s above, then you’ll get a red flag and you cannot go any further,” says Andre Wilt, trailer products specialist at Haldex. “There cannot be an incorrect calculation with this tool.”

The platform supports multiple working models: manufacturers can submit a specification request for Haldex engineers to calculate on their behalf, or take full access to run their own calculations with ongoing support available. This flexibility makes it well suited to agricultural trailer OEMs that may be newer to the demands of formalised brake calculations than their vehicle counterparts.

Valve knowledge that software alone cannot replicate

While the platform automates compliance checking, Haldex emphasises that the expertise underpinning the calculations remains a critical differentiator – particularly in the agricultural sector, where pneumatic braking systems built around multiple valves require a depth of knowledge that electronic brake systems (EBS) in road vehicles have largely automated away.

“You have to know which valve to use in which place, and why – because you don't want to use a valve if you don't need it,” says Wilt. “Each valve is installed in series, one after the other, so you need to know what one valve is doing to the next and make the suitable settings work together."

BrakeIt Online makes it straightforward to test different valve configurations – adding or removing a component and recalculating with a few clicks – but the underlying expertise in interpreting those results and advising on optimal system design remains the domain of Haldex and its specialist engineers.

The calculations themselves must account for a wide range of variables: vehicle category, design load and speed, centre of gravity, wheelbase, and the load transfer characteristics between axles. Fully loaded and unladen conditions are both calculated, with load sensing valves – connected to the trailer's suspension system – automatically adapting brake output pressure to match the actual load being carried.

Looking ahead: EBS and autonomous systems

Both Wilt and Heer point to the growing adoption of electronic brake systems in agricultural trailers as a trend. EBS simplifies production line setup, reduces the number of manual adjustments required, and allows brake pressure settings to be configured electronically – advantages that manufacturers are already beginning to exploit.

On the tractor side, Heer sees increasing integration of electronic control data into brake actuation as a focus for the future, enabling brake performance to be informed by real-time vehicle dynamics rather than pedal input alone, something that is helping to enable the emergence of autonomous field operations. “Autonomous tractors will be driven by humans on roads in the near future and autonomously on the fields,” Heer says. “We will see what the outcomes will be in the next decade.”

For manufacturers building agricultural trailers and machinery today, Haldex’s BrakeIt Online as the most accessible route to compliant, optimised brake system design – combining cloud-based tooling with specialist engineering knowledge carried across from decades of experience.

For manufacturers building agricultural trailers and machinery today, BrakeIt Online represents more than a calculation tool – it is a gateway to a combination of regulatory knowledge, component expertise and engineering support, making Haldex the perfect partner for future-proofing braking systems.