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In the present paper we introduce a monolithic CFD approach to simulate the cooling-down characteristics of disk brakes. To ensure a strong coupling between fluid and solid domain the overall transient thermal problem is solved within a single flow solver during the complete cooling-down process. We employ a fully implicit second order solution procedure. The experimental configuration consists of an inertia dynamometer including a generic 17 inch vented front disk with caliper, dust shield, bearing and knuckle. The validation is carried out for three different air flow velocities, with and without dust shield. The temperature is monitored via two thermocouples embedded into outer and inner rotor cheeks. In order to quantify the cooling-down characteristics, regression analysis are conducted on the temperature curves. The obtained cooling coefficient serves as comparison between measurement and computation.

Modern development in the automotive industry is strongly effected by fast turnaround times due to shorter development cycles for every new product. This leads to a reduction of more and more prototypes. Under these challenging circumstances traditional, hardware based development approaches often reach their limits. Together with new CAE tools the lack of resources and information can be faced. This paper will describe how CFD simulation (Computational Fluid Dynamics) cooperates with traditional wind tunnel tests to reduce cost and provide even more valuable information. The efficient combination of both tools is the key for best aerodynamic optimized vehicles. In CFD the external aerodynamics of a certain styling (aerodynamic coefficients, flow field visualization) is generated even before any hardware prototypes are available. This allows the development engineer to rank different styling studies and a pre-optimization of selected themes prior to wind tunnel testing.