Transient thermal response of solid, pinned and highly porous ventilated brake discs
Date
2015-05-08
Authors
Mew, Timothy
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Abstract
During braking, heat is generated due to frictional contact between the brake pads and the brake
disc (rotor) of a vehicle. At elevated temperatures, brake fade may occur, leading to potentially
catastrophic brake failure in a vehicle. The heat-dissipating characteristic of a brake disc is a
function both of the physical design of the brake disc, and also the brake disc material. This
research focuses on the effect of brake disc design, in particular, how the surface temperature is
affected by increasing the surface area of a brake disc’s ventilated channel. The surface temperature
of a newly developed brake disc with a wire woven porous ventilated channel (the design of which
is not part of this research) will be compared to existing commercially available designs, and the
parameters governing transient thermal response for solid, ventilated, and porous brake discs during
extended braking will be identified and compared.
The results of this research reveal that the thermal capacity of a brake disc determines the initial
rate of brake disc temperature increase (T), resulting in initial temperatures being T(solid
disc)<T(pin-finned disc)<T(WBD disc). However, for extended braking, the ventilated discs run at
lower temperatures and reach a lower steady state temperature than the solid rotor i.e., T(solid
disc)>T(pin-finned disc)>T(WBD disc) due to the increased convective surface area and addition of
forced convection in the ventilated channels. With the WBD core, a substantially lowered disc
temperature can be achieved.