Simulation of thermal stresses in a disc brake

Abstract: The heat flux produced from the friction between a disc and pad system leads to a high temperature which causes thermal stresses in the disc and after a number of repeated braking cycles, cracks might be initiated. The finite element analysis (FEA) is performed to determine the temperatures profile in the disc and to analyze the stresses for the repeated braking, which could be used to calculate the fatigue life of a disc.Sequentially coupled approach is used for thermo-mechanical problem and the problem is divided into two parts, heat analysis and thermal stress analysis. The heat analysis is obtained by including frictional heat and adopting an Eulerian approach. The heat analysis is conducted by using Abaqus and the toolbox developed by Niclas Strömberg. The thermal stress analysis, which is the main focus of this thesis, is followed using Abaqus. The plasticity theory as background for stress analysis is discussed in detail. The rate independent elasto-plastic plasticity is used in the stress analysis. Temperature independent material properties are considered throughout the thesis work.Isotropic, kinematic and combined hardening models are analyzed for simple 2D academic models for different types of cyclic loads. A benchmark disc and pad model, which is less complicated than the real disc-pad model, is also studied. The linear kinematic hardening model with rate independent elastic-plastic plasticity is used for benchmark and real disc-pad model. The results of the benchmark model and the real model are observed to be similar in terms of plasticity theory.