Measures Development for Brake Dust Emissions with Computational Fluid Dynamics and Particle Imaging Velocimetry

The growing awareness of health relevance of fine dust emissions beyond traditional combustion engines becomes more and more important for state of the art research activities. Already existing emission regulations, which are exclusively dedicated to combustion engines, can also be helpful to regulate brake particle emissions since they are nearly in the same range of size and distribution. Another driver is customer satisfaction like surveys such as J.D. Power are showing.

It can be stated that a major reason for complaints is the elevated wheel soiling by braking-caused emissions. The major goals of research activities are the development, realization and evaluation of countermeasures dedicated to brake particle emissions. For the development of measures a possibility is shown, which allows the characterization of particle loaded flows as well as the realization of countermeasures. Therefore numerical flow simulation (CFD) is used. The existing demand of measure-oriented results allows conclusions of the particle behavior as a consequence of implemented changes like geometry or operational scenarios. Moreover it is shown how the emission behavior of different measures is evaluated. To verify the gained simulation results and to proof additionally countermeasures, a suitable measurement method using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is also presented. This allows describing the flow behavior and the particle emission from the brake. Therefore a variable test rig is presented. This one allows a simplified and abstracted environment to analyze selectively certain parameters as well as high-detailed environments, in which measurements close to real conditions can be taken.