On an Efficient Simulation Approach for Estimating the Cooling Performance of Automotive Vented Disc Brakes under the Scenario of Emergency Braking

This article presents a novel aero-thermal coupled simulation approach for estimating the cooling performance of automotive vented disc brakes under the scenario of emergency braking. This approach couples the quasi-steady computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis in the fluid domain and the transient thermal calculation in the solid domain, and no finite element method (FEM)-based calculation is involved in the simulation. An advanced coupling strategy is proposed and used in the approach to solve the problem of boundary mismatch when data exchanging between the solid and fluid domains, and a specific point-in-polygon (P-in-P) algorithm is incorporated into the approach for a precise calculation of the braking heat flux through the brake disc. This approach has been implemented to analyze the temperature change of the vented disc brake for a real vehicle, and the results show that it is able to replicate the real pattern of heat generation via friction on the surface of the brake disc and accurately predict the temperature peak inside the brake disc. Such an approach has a high potential of engineering application to estimate the cooling performance of different types of automotive frictional brakes under other more complicated scenarios.