Date of Award

Spring 2017

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Jennifer Hudson

Second Advisor

Dr. Christopher Cho

Third Advisor

Dr. Willium Liou

Keywords

Optimization, CFD, thermal performance, significant design, vane type disc brake rotator

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The ever-increasing need of effective transportation puts automobile manufacturers in a situation of continuous improvement and innovate the safety systems. The brake system of an automobile has always been considered as one of the most critical active safety systems. Thermal characteristics of the brake are an important aspect to consider for brake disc durability and performance. The convective cooling of a brake disc is an important factor since design changes in the brake rotor can significantly improve cooling characteristics. The focus of this research is to study and optimize the disc brake rotor for a given heat dissipation rate and predict the effect of various design parameters on the thermal performance of brake rotor. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are used to validate the Limpert’s empirical formulae for convective heat transfer coefficient, which further used and integrated with suitable inequality and equality constraints to form optimization problem. Sensitivity study is performed using a MATLAB algorithm to determine the effects of these design parameters. The results of this thesis may be used as a supporting framework for future research in the field of thermal performance of vane-type brake discs.

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