Study of heat transfer on front– and back-vented brake discs

A brake disc plays an important role in the automotive industry since it concerns directly with safety. In order to develop proper heat ventilation a wide range of brake discs have been designed. Different types of physical brake disc geometries, as front- and back-vented brake discs, affect the heat ventilation directly. This is a vital factor of the brake’s capability. We recognized the importance of this circumstance and therefore attempted to create a test to investigate the temperature gradient of the brake disc in order to evaluate the coefficients of heat convection. The coefficients were modified by the change of temperature distribution in both brake discs under the forced heat convection in steady state conditions. However, the heat radiation value does not take into account that the heat convection is dominated by the physical geometry of the brake disc. To set up the experimental test for investigating the heat transfer by convection the JASO C406 standard is adopted. The experimental results in terms of heat convection coefficients are used in the numerical simulation via the finite element method in order to study the temperature diffusion and heat ventilation of front and back-vented brake discs. Conse-quently, the experimental results reveal that the overall heat convection coefficients of the front-vented brake disc are higher than these of the back-vented one. In other words the simulation yields that the front-vented brake disc allows stronger heat ventilation than its compared object, leading to larger temperature differences between outboard and inboard rotors, resulting in more thermal stress. This makes it more susceptible to be damaged during operation.