Finite Element–Based Wear Analysis of Brake Pads

Brake pads are essential components that play a critical role in ensuring vehicle safety and braking performance. Variations in the pad–disc contact interface directly affect the behavior of both the disc and the piston, which can lead to reduced braking efficiency, unstable pedal response, or overall brake system degradation. As wear on the pad surface gradually alters the contact conditions, accurately predicting the evolution of brake pad wear is vital not only for maintaining brake stability but also for assessing long-term component durability. In particular wear behavior observed during the burnish evaluation mode is significant, as this phase governs the stabilization of the pad surface and influences the establishment of a steady friction coefficient. In this study, a finite element–based wear analysis procedure was developed using the Archard wear theory to evaluate the wear behavior of automotive brake pads. A wear direction algorithm and an element distortion control technique were implemented to mitigate excessive mesh distortion that may occur during iterative wear simulations. Within the ABAQUS environment, the Umeshmotion capability was used to update nodal positions according to accumulated wear, while the USDFLD subroutine was employed to compute local wear depth and update material fields throughout the analysis. The developed analysis framework was applied to the burnish evaluation mode of a brake pad. Through this approach, the effects of key parameters such as contact pressure, friction coefficient, and relative slip velocity on the amount of wear were quantitatively examined. The proposed methodology effectively reproduced the physical behavior observed in the burnish evaluation mode, and comparisons with test results and commercial simulation tools confirmed its high reliability in predicting wear patterns.