Structural and Thermal Analysis of Brake Disc with Various Composites

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">The essential aspect of an automobile is its braking system. Brakes absorb the kinetic energy of the rotating parts, i.e., wheels, and dissipate this energy into the surroundings in the form of heat. This entire process is quite complex, and the brake disc is subjected to extreme thermal and structural stresses along with deformation, which might damage the disc. This paper presents a structural and thermal analysis of an Audi Q3 brake disc using an ANSYS 2021-R1. The present brake disc is designed using SOLIDWORKS software. Composite materials are added in the ansys material library by adding their respective characteristics. The thermal analysis mainly focused on temperature variation and directional heat flux. The structural study was conducted to understand the stresses developed during braking and the deformations observed.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph">Along with a comprehensive structural and thermal analysis, this work has also estimated the life of the brake disc, the factor of safety, and the real-time behavior of modern automobile brake discs under working conditions. A comprehensive performance analysis of gray cast iron and two different composites (silicon carbide-reinforced carbon fiber and silicon carbide-reinforced aluminum) was carried out structurally and thermally to understand their behavior in real-time. The numeric value of each parameter for each material is presented in tabular format to provide a comparative idea of materials’ performances. This paper compares the performance of different brake disk materials under the same real-time conditions. All considered materials were not present in the ansys library, so we have created new material in the ansys library by providing specific material properties.</div></div>