Study on the temperature dissipation performance of brake pads with different surface patterns

Drum brakes may fail due to overheating in the contact area during frequent braking. This research takes the honeycomb structure with excellent heat dissipation and strength as the biomimetic object, and processes different biomimetic patterns on the surface of the brake pad. Using a self-made drum brake test bench, the changes in braking duration and surface temperature of different biomimetic pattern brake pads under emergency braking and repeated braking tests at different braking intervals are studied. The experimental results indicate that the braking duration of patterned brake pad is 7.82%–11.8% shorter than that of normal brake pads. Although the temperature of normal brake pads is lower at the end of braking, as the heat dissipation cycle prolongs, patterned brake pads exhibit faster heat dissipation, with honeycomb patterns having better heat dissipation than circular and square patterns. Using the least squares method, it was calculated that when the braking cycles were greater than 10.3, 12.0, and 14.5 s, the braking heat dissipation effect of honeycomb, circular, and square brake pads was better than that of normal brake pads. These results validate that honeycomb patterned brake pads can alleviate the occurrence of thermal degradation in drum brakes.