Flow streamlining for cooling improvement in ventilated brake disc using CFD as design tool

Abstract

This paper presents experimental and Computational Fluids Dynamics (CFD) investigations of the flow and heat transfer in ventilated brake discs. The validation CFD model is done using the straight blade (baseline design) configuration with available experimental data. Development of an experiment rig with basic measuring devices and uncertainty calculation are discussed. Then, unidirectional racing blade configuration is then further focused on the improvement of the brake cooling using the similar numerical setting. Conventional and streamlined ventilated brake disc are simulated using commercial CFD software FLUENTTM and the parameters such as mass flow and heat transfer characteristics are compared. The streamlined ventilated blade design shows a significant improvement in terms of the mass flow and heat transfer coefficient compared to the conventional unidirectional design. This improvement is only achieved with enhancing the aerodynamic characteristics of the internal passage blade and without any additional mass at the disc brake.