CFD and CAE Approach for Brake Rotor Thermal Analysis

To replicate on-road brake test cycle of cooling or heating through Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations, the vehicle model with brake assembly must be solved in transient mode. However, such simulations require significant computational time owning to the physics involved in computing the variation of temperature with time. A methodology developed using commercial CFD tools to predict the Heat Transfer Coefficient (h), Cooling Coefficient (b) and rotor temperatures is described in this paper. All the three modes of heat transfer: conduction, convection and radiation are considered in the current method. Heat transfer coefficients from the CFD simulations are exported to Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools to validate the Brake Rotor Thermal Coning caused by high thermal gradients in brake rotor. For the better brake system design, it is essential to predict the accurate brake rotor cooling parameters and temperatures associated with it in the braking process at the early stages of vehicle program.

CFD and CAE analysis results are validated with the test results in establishing the analysis procedure for brake rotor thermal simulations. Validated CFD method brings the benefit of substantially reduced computational time to run transient simulations.