Coupled Field Analysis of Disc Brake Rotor

Disk brakes are widely used for reducing velocity for their characteristics of braking stability, controllability and their ability to provide a wide ranging torque. The frictional heat generated on the interface of rotor can cause high temperature, which leads to undesirable effects such as brake fade phenomena, local scoring, thermal cracking and thermoelastic instability. In the course of braking the parameters of the processes like load, temperature and conditions of contact vary with time.So, to consider the effects of moving heat source with relative sliding speed variation a transient thermal analysis is performed for four seconds of braking duration to characterize the temperature fields of the solid rotor with appropriate thermal boundary conditions. For the present analysis of solid rotor, ANSYS is used as a FEA tool. Once the brake rotor temperature distribution is obtained a transient structural analysis is performed to predict the failure of the disk rotor. Influence of changing the material properties and geometric configuration like providing vents in the solid rotor, on temperature and stress distribution obtained is analyzed in this work to minimize the high tempt.