Thermal Analysis of Automotive Brake Rotor

Abstract

The heat dissipation and thermal performance of ventilated brake discs strongly depends on the aerodynamic characteristics of the air flow through the rotor passages. In this paper, the thermal convection is analyzed using an analytical method, and the velocity distribution, temperature contours and Nusselt number are determined. Then numerical models for different rotors, pillar post rotors and vane rotors are generated and numerical simulations are conducted to determine the desired parameters. To analyze more realistic vane and pillar post rotor models, commercial CFD software packages, Fluent and Gambit, are used to simulate the heat flux rate, air flow rate, velocity distributions, temperature contours, and pressure distributions inside the rotors. Furthermore, sensitivity studies have been performed, to determine the effects of a different number of vanes or pillar posts, inner and outer radii and various angles of vanes.