The brake system is of vital importance when engineering a new vehicle due to its implication with both safety and overall performance. One of the main questions that arise when designing the brake system, not only in terms of performance but also in efficiency and fuel economy is how to make a better brake rotor.
When designing the brake rotor, thinking about mass reduction and design optimization is a desire not only for high-performance motorsport, but for daily user applications. The impact on the vehicle performance would lead to improved fuel economy and braking safety.
In this work, we propose to exploit some characteristics that can optimize the rotor design to achieve better performance, compared to a baseline design proposed. Some constructive characteristics are kept constant such as the rotor diameter and thickness. The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations is considered in this study as a benchmark to future physical prototypes experiments.
Within the results, this study aims to quantify the influence of the number of vanes on the brake rotor in terms of performance, but also compare the application of curved vanes with the current straight ones. Trying to find the best number of vanes and ideal angle for curved vanes is a complementary object we propose with this study.