Thermomechanical simulation of a brake disc

Project Support
1

Hi everybody,

Firstly I have to say that I´m new to the simscale simulation software and to simulations in general, I did a few easy FEA simulation with Creo from PTC but thats all of my experience.

I´m a member of a Formula Student Team and my task for this season is to find a way to simulate the behaviour of brake discs under the influence of the heat which is created from the friction during the brake process.

My plan is the following:

  • First I want to do simple static simulations with the brake disk and the brake pads to get familiar with simscale and to compare different design relating to von mises stress and displacement.
    I finished the first simulation sucessfully with a non rotating disk
  • The next step is to simulate a rotating disc with non rotating pads to get a step closer to reality.
  • The overall aim is to simulate a rotating disk with pads inside a caliper and see the thermal and mechanical behaviour of all parts.

But I recognized that I need your support, cause I didnt find a way to get the disk in rotation.

I´m looking forward to your answers

with kind regards

Daniel

(SimScale)

2

Hi there @bremsenkarle !

Very nice simulation you are working on! Can you please set your project to public first so that I and the Solid Mechanics support can have a look at it? Someone of us will get back to you as soon as possible. Looking forward to see the results of the simulation!

Cheers and all the best!

Jousef

3

Hey Jousef,

the project is now public.

Thanks for your prompt reaction to my post

regards

Daniel

4

@bremsenkarle @jousefm

Interesting project!

I took i look and it is not clear to me why you chose those boundary conditions for the static case, I would do it differently. Here are some ideas:

  • Apply fixed dof to the bolting faces

  • Apply a centrifugal load to simulate rotation

  • Replace pads with cut regions, where to apply equivalent loads due to pressure and friction

For the dynamics case you can use the mesh as it is

For the thermal case with heating due to friction I think it might not be possible in this setup, you might have to use a modelling workaround.

I’ll try to setup a copy of the project and report back.

[EDIT]

Here is the sample project link:

https://www.simscale.com/projects/ggiraldo/brake_disk_front_test1/

1 Like
5

Hi @bremsenkarle,
I agree with @ggiraldo that you would need a modeling workaround for the frictional heat creation.
Currently heat creation due to frictional contact is not possible and additionally, as we have a chained approach for the thermomechanical analysis, the moving contact area is not taken into account for the thermal analysis (as we first resolve the thermal part on the initial undeformed configuration and apply this as “control variables” into the structural part.

You could use a similar approach as @ahmedhussain18 used in his laser beam welding project: SimScale

Best,
Richard

1 Like
6

Hey everybody,

many thanks for your support and your hints.
As I said, i´m very new to simulations and may just played a bit around.
I will take your ideas step by step in my simulation to get a better understanding and to get better results.

Thank you all

I´m looking forward to get through my task with you

best regards

Karle

1 Like