A Methodological Process for Optimizing Brake Cooling and Simulation of Brake Rotor Flow Field 952696

Brake cooling is a very important consideration in the brake system design. To achieve effective cooling, an in-depth understanding of the brake cooling flow phenomena is essential. A systematic method for the engineering process of optimizing brake cooling design is developed in this study. The process consists of three phases. The first phase is brake rotor flow analysis in a rotating reference frame to simulate the flow motion through the brake rotor. The second phase is the vehicle external/underbody flow analysis which provides the necessary understanding of flow field surrounding brake systems for subsequent component optimization. The third phase is the design optimization to achieve the high performance brake cooling design.

In this paper, the details of the three phase process is first presented and the technology involved is also discussed. Then, as the first phase of the process, a three dimensional turbulent flow field in a rotating brake rotor is analyzed. Since the brake rotor is the core of the cooling process, the capability to analyze flow in a rotating reference frame is critical to the success of the process. The flow model and the corresponding boundary conditions for the rotating brake rotor are described in detail in this paper. Finally, the results of a brake rotor flow simulation are presented. The analysis results reveal the cooling air flow mechanism of a vaned rotor and indicate that the rotor vane configuration design plays a very important role in improving brake rotor cooling performance.