Floating Callipers

Floating callipers...since the calliper itself reacts to the hydraulic pressure on one side of the piston as if it were a second piston, the cross-sectional area for calculating "pad-squeeze" is doubled. You didn't clarify this, even though it's the ultimate reason for keeping sliding callipers in good condition.

To which tutorial/video are you referring? You are correct in that one side has an action and the other the re-action, but I don't know if there is a mis-understanding on your part, or an error on theirs, that the explanation is unclear, or wrong??

In the course we take the approach of calculation of the Normal force on the pad using the piston area on one side of the calliper only, regardless of a sliding or fixed calliper.

Ignoring stiffness, weight, ease of maintenance etc etc, this is why a single piston sliding calliper is somewhat equivalent to a fixed 2 pot.

In an early module in the course, we cover brake system hydraulics and the relationship between the pressure, force and displacement.

The reason for this comes down to the sliding piston traveling twice as far as each opposing piston in the fixed calliper as the body of the sliding calliper moves as well.

There was a similar question a few weeks ago: https://www.hpacademy.com/forum/brake-system-design-and-optimization/show/why-calculating-with-only-half-caliper-piston-area/

Of course, this is the normal force on a single pad, and so the clamping force is twice this for calculating the brake torque.

So we basically end up in the same place as if we had doubled the piston area of the sliding calliper.

You're absolutely right, if the sliding callipers aren't functioning correctly, this all goes out the window.

Does this help at all? not sure if there was an original question.

Let me know if there is a specific module that's unclear and I can go back and fix it.