Compliant Shoe-Orientation Brake

General Information

Compliant Shoe-Orientation Brake provide a consistent orientation of the shoe, which allows the brake pad to be in a constant orientation. This design with its additional feature of a compliant segment provides certain advantages over traditional cantilever brakes:

• Shoe-Orientation – the shoes move in a consistent manner, which helps eliminate uneven pad wear and reduces the need to adjust pads to compensate for wear
• Simple – reduced complexity of competitive designs, which results in minimal maintenance and overall weight
• Vibration and Noise reduction – by removing springs and some bearing pin joints, and replacing them with compliance the brake has significantly less vibrations and noise

The Market

The US bicycle market is a $4.2 billion industry. The compliant shoe-orientation brake design improves high-force, constant-orientation brake designs by reducing part-count, assembly, and weight.

Patent Information

U.S. Patent No. 6,454,055

Licensing Information

For licensing information, contact the BYU Office of Technology Transfer.

Additional Resources

Mattson, C.A., Howell, L.L., and Magleby, S.P., “Development of Commercially Viable Compliant Mechanisms Using the Pseudo-Rigid-Body Model: Case Studies of Parallel Mechanisms,” Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 195-202, 2004.