In developing countries, motorcycles have become the most economically efficient
choice for commuting. A variety of braking systems in motorcycles like Brake
drum and Disk brake have once again become the deciding criteria for wise
economic selection of a motorcycle. Due to the low cost of a brake drum compared
with a disk brake, a median income group customer segment commonly prefers to
buy the brake drum versions rather than disk brake. However the performance of
the brake drum is inferior to the disk brake. One major inferior performance
feature is brake fade.
For a target customer segment, it always becomes a challenge for OEMs to provide
the desired braking at sufficiently low costs for customers of that segment,
while with the drum braking system, usually the user ends up with loss of brake
effectiveness due to overheating, which in turn is produced by repeated braking
actions.
In this paper, a methodology to minimize brake fade was devised. By redesigning
the brake drum (BD) for enhanced cooling effect, brake fade has been
minimized.
We have verified the results of enhanced cooling with respect to the existing
design of the BD with software simulation.