Squeal and Thermal Analysis of Automobile Disc Brake Rotors

The brakes of an automobile are among the most critical components regarding the safety features, and disc brakes are the most common type used in passenger vehicles. In this research, the squeal phenomena of a swirl-vent brake rotor and the thermal analysis of two straight-vent brake rotors, made of cast-iron and aluminum-alloy, are investigated. For the squeal analysis, finite element models are created and analyzed using a prestressed modal analysis with complex eigen-solutions. For the thermal analysis, heat transfer coefficients on the surfaces of a rotor as functions of time are first estimated by CFD simulation, and then imported to a thermal analysis program as the boundary condition. Finally, the temperature distribution of the rotor can be calculated by finite element analysis. The simulation results show that vortices will arise in the vented passages of straight-vent rotors, which means less heat carried away and lower heat transfer coefficients. The swirl-vent brake design is clearly better for thermal ventilation. Furthermore, under the same condition, aluminum-alloy rotors exhibit more uniform temperature distributions with smaller temperature gradients than cast-iron rotors do.