A wave-based heat source model for predicting frictional temperature rise in wheel–brake shoe contacts on long downhill slopes

This study presents an enhanced numerical model for simulating frictional temperature rise during long-duration tread braking, employing wave-based heat source formulations. A three-dimensional wheel–brake shoe contact model was developed in ANSYS to compare various heat source models, including constant, moving, and wave-based functions (sine, cosine, triangular, and parabolic). Results demonstrate that wave-based heat sources more realistically capture the spatial and temporal temperature evolution than constant heat sources. Among them, the cosine-based heat source method offered the optimal trade-off between computational efficiency and accuracy, reducing the discrepancy between constant and moving heat source models from 2.54%∼6.10% to 1.87%∼5.42%. The moving heat source method, which accounts for contact-separation-recontact processes, provided the most accurate results, showing the least deviation from experimental results. However, it demands over 5.3 times more computational effort than wave-based methods. Based on these results, the cosine-based heat source is recommended for balancing computational efficiency and accuracy in temperature analysis of tread braking under long downhill gradient conditions. This work provides key insights into frictional heat generation and supports engineering design and optimization in braking systems.