Search Results

The goal of this paper is to delineate recent experimental evidence that the presence of conforming surface wear groove tends to stabilize the vibration and noise response of aircraft brakes. This finding is consistent with an earlier theoretical study in which the contact between Carbon-Carbon (C/C) composite brake disks was assumed to be visco-elastic and through this assumption it was found that the existence of conforming grooves results in increasing dynamic stability of brake disk interaction. Therefore, the presumption of visco-elastic contact for C/C brakes seems to agree with the experimental observation in a subscale dynamometer. The present paper summarizes both theoretical analysis and the test results. In the tests C/C composites were heat treated for one hour at temperatures 1800°C and 2400°C, respectively. They were then subjected to frictional tests in a subscale aircraft brake dynamometer at 50 % relative humidity (RH) level.