A Numerical Study on the Thermo-Mechanical Instabilities of Heavy Vehicle Brake Disc

The primary objective of a brake disc is to absorb frictional heat during braking and dissipated it immediately by convection and radiation. However, during hard and repetitive brakings, thermal coning on brake disc generates surface hot spots which are responsible for the undesired accumulation of compressive stresses on the surface of the brake disc. These stresses would lead to disc cracking and finally failure of it. In the current paper, a coupled transient thermo-mechanical FE analysis of a heavy vehicle braking system is carried out in a way that thermal coning of the disc and surface hot spots and bands are recognizable. Braking condition is chosen from a standard for hard braking in trucks. Moreover, five additional braking actions with different severities are investigated to study the effects of braking severity on thermo-mechanical instability of brake discs. Comparison of numerical results of transient temperature during braking and cooling phases with experiment reveal a high accuracy of thermal prediction of this model. Also, the results show that thermal coning of brake disc is varied between 0.05 to 0.7 mm depending on braking severity and tangential location of the disc. Additionally, surface hot spots experience higher temperature gradients in higher decelerations. Finally, results show that circumferential compressive stresses during braking are the major component of thermal stresses and should be taken into account for life estimation analysis.