Simulation of Heat Generation in Analyzing Thermoelastic Instability in Disk Brakes

During a vehicle's braking action, a wheel's kinetic energy is transformed into heat, which doesn't dissipate fast enough into the air stream from the brake to the brake disk. Thus, one of a disk brake's material properties — thermal conductivity — plays a critical role. In addition, thermal judder results from non-uniform contact cycles between the pad and the disk brake rotor, which is primarily an effect of the localized thermoelastic instabilities (TEI) at the disk brake's rotor surface. Localized TEI can generate intermittent hot bands around the rubbing path.