To maintain the vehicle speed in a proper range, the commercial vehicle needs to
brake frequently on a downhill path. The drum brake system of the medium- and
heavy-duty commercial vehicles often faces the danger of brake fade, which
reduces brake efficiency or even causes braking failure. They are critical
potential risks on the road.
The kinetic energy is transferred into thermal energy during the braking process.
The temperature rises dramatically during the braking process due to the massive
thermal energy caused by the huge mass of the commercial vehicle. The brake
efficiency and the life of the brake drum will decrease with the rising
temperature. A malfunction of the brake system may occur if the drum brake is
overheated. To improve the cooling efficiency of the drum brake, a forced-air
cooling system driven by the air compressor in the diesel is designed for the
drum brake system after the analysis of its thermal model. A computational fluid
dynamics (CFD) model is established and modified after comparison with the test
result. Based on this modified model, the parameters of this system are
optimized through adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO).
This optimized forced-air cooling system decreases the maximum temperature of the
brake system from 291.9°C to 200°C under the most critical work condition. It
allows the commercial vehicle to operate in a safer situation with a lighter
weight compared to the current water cooling system.
