Virtual Downhill Brake Cooling Evaluation Methodology

A real-time monitoring method for brake temperature rise in long downhill varying velocity according to a pattern to evaluate the BET (Brake Equilibrium Temperature) is expensive in time and money. The solution proposed here take advantage of recent advances in CFD Codes and computational power that allowed big models being run on clusters of production level by the industries worldwide. This paper takes advantage of these advances and proposes a methodology for Brake cooling simulation at downhill following a previously downhill map of time x velocity x pedal pressure.

The methodology proposed presented 95% correlation with physical test and now is possible, in virtual word, to evaluate the entire downhill procedure for a new vehicle design before any physical prototype is available.