THERMAL AND STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF

VENTED AND NORMAL DISC BRAKE ROTORS

ABSTRACT

Safety aspect in automotive engineering has been considered as a number one priority in
development of new vehicle. Each single system has been studied and developed in order to
meet safety requirement. Instead of having air bag, good
suspension systems, good handling and safe cornering, there is one most critical system
in the vehicle which is brake systems.

Without brake system in the vehicle will put a passenger in un safe position. Therefore, it is a
must for all vehicles to have proper brake system. Due to critical system in the vehicle, many
of researchers have conducted a study on brake system and its entire component. In this
project, the author has conducted a study on ventilated and normal disc brake rotor of normal
passenger vehicle with full load of capacity. The study is more likely concern of heat and
temperature distribution on disc brake rotor.

Steady state and transient response has been conducted through the heat transfer analysis
where to predict the worse case scenario and temperature behaviors of disc brake rotor.
In this study, finite element analysis approached has been conducted in order to identify the
temperature distributions and behaviors of disc brake rotor in steady state and transient
responses. Ansysis has been used as finite elements software to perform the thermal analysis
on both responses. Both results have been compared for better justification. Thus, both results
provide better understanding on the thermal characteristic of disc brake rotor and assist the
automotive industry in developing optimum and effective disc brake rotor.

INTRODUCTION

1.1. Introduction

Brakes are most important safety parts in the vehicles. Generally all of the vehicles
have their own safety devices to stop their car. Brakes function to slow and stop the
rotation of the wheel. To stop the wheel, braking pads are forced mechanically against
the rotorldisc on both surfaces. They are compulsory for all of the modern vehicles and
the safe operation of vehicles. In short, brakes transform the kinetic energy of the car
into heat energy, thus slowing its speed.
Brakes have been retuned and improved ever since their invention. The increases in
travelling speeds as well as the growing weights of cars have made these improvements
essential. The faster a car goes and the heavier it is, the harder it is to stop. An effective
braking system is needed to accomplish this task with challenging term where material
need to be lighter than before and performance of the brakes must be improved. Today's
cars often use a combination of disc brakes and drum brakes. For normal sedan car,
normally disc brakes are located on the front two wheels and drum brakes on the back
two wheels. Clearly shows that, together with the steering components and tyres
represent the most important accident avoidance systems present on a motor vehicle
which must reliably operate under various conditions. However, the effectiveness of
braking system depends on the design itself and also the right selection of material.
systems than follow with some improvements. In order to understand the behaviors of
braking system, there are three functions that must be complied for all the time (Smith,
2002);

a) The braking system must be decelerate a vehicle in a controlled and repeatable

fashion and when appropriate cause the vehicle to stop.
b) The braking should permit the vehicle to maintain a constant speed when traveling
downhill.
c) The braking system must hold the vehicle stationary when on the flat or on a
gradient.

Nowadays, there are lot of software has been developed in order to cater the
modeling and the finite element analysis on the vehicle component such as (Automatic
Dynamic of Mechanical Systems), CATIA, ANSYS. There is an advantage of using that
powerful computational analysis software where by using those would make it easier,
less cost better accuracy and less computing time. Most of the software is used in the
wide range of industries such as automotive, oil and gas, aerospace, marine, heavy duty
engineering ,construction, electro-mechanical and general mechanical industries. In this
project, design package CATIA and finite element package will be used to generate
model and run analysis on the chosen component.

OBJECTIVE AND SCOPE

The aim at the end of this project is to predict the temperature rise and the
temperature behaviour of ventilated disc brake rotor with full passenger in the vehicle.
In
achieving this aim, project objectives are set as below:

To understand the working principles, components, standards and theories through

a literature study.

To understand the working principle of FEA Software (ANSYS)

To understand the fundamental of heat transfer through thermal analysis of disc

brake rotor.
To clearly justifL the result and conclusion.

The knowledge gained from this project is to be able to understand the steps needed
in thermal analysis of disc brake rotor by using FEA method. The methods used in this
project can later be used in future as reference for similar research and development.
There is the wide range of study on the disc brake rotor. The disc brake rotor could
be studied on the various areas such as material improvement on the disc brake rotor,
vibration on the disc brake, noise and squeal of the disc brake and thermal stress analysis
on the disc brake rotor. However, on this project, the author will intend to emphasize
details on the thermal analysis on the disc brake rotor of normal passenger vehicle with
full
capacity of passenger.

The scopes of the projects are:

Literature review on the working principles, components, standards and theories.

Construction of 2D and 3D model of disc brake rotor.
FE model (Meshing of Geometry model)
Finite element analysis on steady state and transient analysis which shows the
temperature distribution of disc brake rotor.
Final justification and conclusion.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Begin with a literature review, alot of paper and journal has been read up and a part of it
has been considered in this project. Meanwhile, Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM)
has been used to measure the major coordinate of real disc brake rotor. CMM has been
used in order to get accurate dimension of disc brake rotor. Later, the precise dimensions
have been used to translate in 2D and 3D drawing by using CATIA.

In the second stage, load analysis has been done where the heat flux and convectional
heat transfer coefficients has been calculated. Load analysis calculated based
on full load of passenger in the normal passenger vehicle. Later, value of load analysis
has been applied on finite element analysis.

Next, the fractional 3D model of disc brake rotor has been transfer to finite element
software which is ANSYS. Thermal analysis has been done on steady state and transient
responses. Assigning material properties, load and meshing of the model has been done
in this stages. Then, completed meshing model has been submitted for analysis. Finally
an expected result from the steady state and transient responses of thermal analysis has
been obtained. A flow chart below shows a better understanding of overall contents of
this project.

MODELING AND ANALYSIS

It is very difficult to exactly model the brake disk, in which there are still researches are
going on to find out transient thermo elastic behavior of disk brake during braking
applications. There is always a need of some assumptions to model any complex
geometry. These assumptions are made, keeping in mind the difficulties involved in the
theoretical calculation and the importance of the parameters that are taken and those
which are ignored. In modeling we always ignore the things that are of less importance
and have little impact on the analysis. The assumptions are always made depending
upon the details and accuracy required in modeling.

The assumptions which are made while modeling the process are given below:-

1. The disk material is considered as homogeneous and isotropic.

2. The domain is considered as axis-symmetric.

3. Inertia and body force effects are negligible during the analysis.

4. The disk is stress free before the application of brake.

5. Brakes are applied on the entire four wheels.

6. The analysis is based on pure thermal loading and thus only stress level due to the
above said is done the analysis does not determine the life of the disk brake.

7. Only ambient air-cooling is taken into account and no forced Convection is taken.

8. The kinetic energy of the vehicle is lost through the brake disks i.e. no heat loss
between the tyre and the road surface and deceleration is uniform.

9. The disk brake model used is of solid type and ventilated one.

10. The thermal conductivity of the material used for the analysis is uniform throughout.

11. The specific heat of the material used is constant throughout and does not change
with temperature.

DEFINITION OF PROBLEM DOMAIN

Due to the application of brakes on the car disk brake rotor, heat generation takes place
due to friction and this thermal flux has to be conducted and dispersed across the disk
rotor cross section. The condition of braking is very much severe and thus the thermal
analysis has to be carried out. The thermal loading as well as structure is axis-
symmetric. Hence axis-symmetric analysis can be performed, but in this study we
performed 3-D analysis, which is an exact representation for this thermal analysis.

Thermal analysis is carried out and with the above load structural analysis is also
performed for analyzing the stability of the structure.

The 3d model of the solid type brake is done in CATIA and converted into parasolid
file.

Fig. solid type disk brake 3D model isometric view

 Fig. solid type disk brake 3D model front view

Fig. solid type disk brake 3D model wireframe

CONCLUSIONS

The present study can provide a useful design tool and improve the brake performance
of disk brake system. From the below Table we can say that all the values obtained from
the analysis are less than their allowable values. Hence the brake disk design is safe
based on the strength and rigidity criteria. Comparing the different results obtained from
analysis. It is concluded that ventilated type disk brake is the best possible for the
present application.

Solid Type Ventilated Type

Total Deflection
in (mm) 2.351 0.248
Vonmises Stress 2.26E+12 2.17E+06
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