Wear 267 (2009) 22432251

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Wear
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wear

Simulation of wear and contact pressure distribution at the pad-to-rotor interface in a disc brake using general purpose nite element analysis software
Anders Sderberg , Sren Andersson
KTH Machine Design, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Passenger car disc brakes are safety-critical components whose performance depends strongly on contact conditions at the pad-to-rotor interface. The interface can be classied as a conformal dry sliding contact. During braking both brake pad and rotor surfaces are worn, affecting the useful life of the brake as well as its behavior. This paper discusses how wear of the pad-to-rotor interface can be predicted using general purpose nite element analysis software. A three-dimensional nite element model of the brake pad and the rotor is developed to calculate the pressure distribution in the pad-to-rotor contact. A wear simulation procedure based on a generalized form of Archards wear law and explicit Euler integration is used to simulate the wear of the brake pad under steady-state drag conditions. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 27 September 2008 Received in revised form 17 July 2009 Accepted 4 September 2009 Available online 19 September 2009 Keywords: Disc brake Wear simulation Finite element analysis Sliding wear

1. Introduction Passenger car disc brakes are safety-critical components whose performance depends strongly on the contact conditions at the pad-to-rotor interface. When the driver steps on the brake pedal, hydraulic uid is pushed against the piston of the caliper, which in turn forces the brake pads into contact with the rotor. The frictional forces at the sliding interfaces between the pads and the rotor retard the rotational movement of the rotor and the axle on which it is mounted. The kinetic energy of the vehicle is transformed into heat that is mainly absorbed by the rotor and the brake pad. The pad-to-rotor interface can be classied as a conformal dry sliding contact. During braking a point on the brake pad is in constant contact with the rotor, whereas a point on the rotor experiences intermittent contact. A natural consequence of the sliding contact is that both the rotor and the pads are worn, affecting the useful life of the brake as well as its behavior. This paper discusses how wear of the pad-to-rotor interface can be predicted using general purpose nite element analysis software. A three-dimensional nite element model of the brake pad and the rotor is developed to calculate the pressure distribution in the pad-to-rotor contact. A wear simulation procedure based on a generalized form of Archards wear law and the Euler integration scheme is adopted to simulate macroscopic wear of the brake pad.

The usefulness of this numerical model is demonstrated by a simulation of running-in wear under steady-state drag conditions. In its present state the model is very simplied and is therefore only suitable for design trend analysis, not for prediction of absolute contact pressure levels or amount of wear. 2. Modeling approach A model is a simplied representation of reality that serves a well-dened purpose. Here the aim is to develop a nite element (FE) based model that allows structural analysis of the disc brake assembly at one of the front brake corners of a passenger car. The explicit purpose of the structural analysis is to compute the pad-torotor pressure distribution and use the result to simulate the wear process of the pad. The brake corner consists of the knuckle, the wheel bearing, and the actual disc brake assembly. The disc brake assembly consists of a ventilated rotor, a oating caliper with a single piston, and two brake pads. The brake pad mounted on the piston is often referred to as the piston-side brake pad, and the pad on the opposite side is called the nger-side brake pad. The brake corner is connected to the cars suspension system through the knuckle, the wheel bearing is connected to the drive line, and the brake cylinder in the caliper is connected to the hydraulic brake line system. Hence, the brake corner can be looked upon as a subsystem consisting of a number of components interrelated to each other and to other subsystems in the vehicle. The components interact at geometrical boundaries, referred to as mating faces. The relations between the mating faces are given by interfaces.

Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 8 790 72 65; fax: +46 8 723 17 30. E-mail address: aes@md.kth.se (A. Sderberg). 0043-1648/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2009.09.004

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Fig. 1. A graphic (above), a full MSM representation (left) and a condensed MSM representation (right) of a model of a system consisting of two components (C1,C2) interrelated to each other and a surrounding environment model (E1) at mating features (mf) through two interface models (i1 and i2).

Fig. 2. Geometric model of the disc brake assembly and a condensed MSM representation of the model. The studied subsystem and its external interfaces are highlighted.

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behavior of the whole system in order to simulate wear at both interfaces simultaneously. Here a more cautious strategy was chosen in which only the piston-side interface is analyzed. This is done by focusing on a subsystem consisting of the piston, the brake pad, and the rotor. 3. Geometric modeling For the simplied subsystem model to be valid, it is important that all components are modeled adequately and that their mating faces are identied and coupled by appropriate interface models. A simplied geometric representation of the subsystem was created in Solid Edge. (Figs. 3 and 4). An MSM representation of the subsystem model is shown in Fig. 5. The subsystem model consists of four components models and eight interface models that dene their interrelation with each other and with the surroundings. The rst component in the subsystem is the piston. It interacts with its surroundings through three mating faces. The rst face is the contact surface with the brake pad, the second is the back of the piston onto which the hydraulic brake line pressure is applied, and the third keeps the piston co-axial with the cylinder in the caliper. The second component is the brake pad, which can be divided into two parts: the actual friction material and a stiff back plate. The back plate is made of steel and serves to support the friction material, which is typically a complex composite combining up to 30 ingredients [5]. The back plate has four mating faces. The rst is the contact surface with the piston, while the second makes up the interface with the friction material. The third and fourth mating faces slide against the carrier when the piston pushes the brake pad toward the rotor. The friction material has only two mating faces. The rst is in contact with the back plate, whereas the second is the outward brake pad surface that is in contact with the rotor. The last component, the ventilated rotor, is made of grey cast iron and has a rather complex geometry. Including all the details in the FE model would require a high number of elements, resulting in a computationally demanding model. Therefore only a part of the rotor is modeled using a simplied geometry which assumes that the rotor is homogenous and symmetric about its midplane. The mating faces of interest are the contact surface with the rotor and the bolt joint attaching the rotor to the wheel bearing. In Fig. 4 the latter face is represented by a point at the center of the rotor. 4. FE modeling The next step in the modeling process is to create a 3D FE model for structural analysis using the general purpose nite element analysis software ANSYS v11.0 from ANSYS Inc. The FE model follows the same structure as the geometric model (i.e. component models with mating features are connected to each other or the

Fig. 3. Simplied CAD model of the studied subsystem.

It is important to model both the components and their interaction with each other and the surroundings. From an engineering point of view, the model should always be as simple as possible but as complex as necessary. Depending on the design question addressed by the simulation, behavior models of different complexity can be needed. It is therefore convenient to apply a modular model architecture dividing the system model into component models, which describe the behavior of the individual components or subsystems, and interface models, which dene their interactions. In this paper the modeling of the brake corner is based on the modular approach proposed by Sellgren and Drogou [1] and further developed by Sellgren [2,3]. This approach divides the system model into component models with mating features that are connected by interface models. Surrounding components or subsystems that interact with the modeled system are dened as environment models and must also be taken in consideration. The structure of a modular system model can be seen in overview using an architecting tool called the model structure matrix (MSM) [3]. The MSM representation of a system model can either be in a condensed form, showing only the components and the interfaces, or fully expanded showing the relation between the individual mating features (Fig. 1). Following this approach, the rst step toward a FE-based behavior model of the brake corner assembly is to identify the components in the system, their mating faces, and how they are interrelated to each other and to other subsystems in the vehicle at their interfaces. This is done using a detailed geometric representation of the disc brake assembly in the commercial CAD software Solid Edge from Siemens PLM Software. The resulting condensed MSM representation of the model is shown in Fig. 2. Elastic deformation of the caliper and differences in the geometries that transfer the normal brake force to the brake pads may give rise to different pressure distributions at the two pad-torotor interfaces [4] and presumably also different wear patterns. A very complex model with a high number of component and interface models would result from attempting to model the structural

Fig. 4. Mating faces of the studied subsystem.

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Fig. 5. MSM representation of the subsystem model.

surroundings by interface models) (Fig. 6). In the FE model a mating feature consists of nodes representing the mating face in the geometrical model. The piston is modeled as a rigid body with a pilot node at its center of mass. All nodes on the contact surface with the back plate are grouped into a rst mating feature. The pilot node is dened as a second mating feature connecting the piston to both the caliper and the brake line system. The back plate is modeled as a deformable body using linear 3D solid elements of type SOLID185. Here four mating features are dened, one for each mating face in the geometric model. The friction material is also modeled as a deformable body using the same type of solid elements. In addition, two mating features representing the mating faces in the geometric model are dened. Both the back plate and friction material are modeled as linear elastic materials. For the complex composite material this can be regarded as

a radical simplication, but it serves as a rst approximation. The rotor is modeled as a rigid body with a pilot node at its center of revolution. All nodes on the contact surfaces with the pad are grouped into a mating feature. The pilot node serves as connection with the surroundings (i.e. the wheel bearing). With all the components and their mating features dened, they can be coupled by interface models. These interface models can be general contact models, coupling equations between nodes (MPC) or described boundary conditions, such as nodal displacements or nodal forces. The rst interface model (i1) represents sliding contact at the pad-to-rotor interface. In ANSYS general contact between two bodies is modeled by a set of contact elements overlaying the elements describing the boundary of the rst body, and a set of target elements overlaying the boundary elements of the second body. Contact occurs when the contact elements penetrate the target elements. The contact and target elements assume the same

Fig. 6. Structure of the FE model.

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has been shown to be appropriate [6,7]. The pad-to-rotor interface can be classied as a conformal dry sliding contact. The most commonly used model for prediction of wear in sliding contacts is the linear wear law proposed by Archard [8] that postulates that the wear rate [m3 /m] is proportional to the normal force. A popular generalization of Archards wear law is based on the assumption that the wear rate at any point on the contact surface is proportional to the local contact pressure p and the relative sliding velocity v according to dh = kpv dt (2)

where k is a contact-pair dependent wear coefcient. In this work Eq. (2) is reformulated as
Fig. 7. FE model with applied normal brake force and rotation of rotor.

dh = kp ds

(3)

shape as the underlying element face (i.e. they share nodes with the underlying elements). The pad-to-rotor interface is modeled as an asymmetric frictional contact, using general contact elements CONTA173 on the deformable friction material surface and a layer of target elements TARGE170 overlaying the rigid rotor surface. The contact is dened using an augmented Lagrangian contact algorithm in both normal and tangential direction and coulomb friction is included. At the second interface (i2) the back plate is rigidly attached to the friction material by being dened as an asymmetric bonded contact. The friction material surface is overlaid by contact elements CONTA173 and the back plate surface is overlaid by target elements TARGE170. The interaction between the piston and the back plate (i3) is represented by asymmetric non-frictional contact. The contact is dened by contact elements CONTA173 overlaying the deformable surface of the back plate, and target elements TARGE170 overlaying the rigid surface of the piston. The interfaces dening the interaction between the piston and the caliper/hydraulic brake line system (i4 and i5) are implemented as displacement constraints and applied force acting on the piston pilot node. The relation with the caliper is represented by translational displacement constraints that only allow motion in the axial direction of the piston. The interaction with the hydraulic brake line system is represented as applied force acting in the axial direction of the piston (Fig. 7). The interface between the rotor and the wheel bearing (i6) is modeled by displacement constraints on the rotor pilot node. The bearing prevents all motion except rotation about the wheel axis. The effects of this rotation on the contact pressure distribution can be studied by prescribing a small rotational displacement about the free axis, causing full sliding at the pad-to-rotor interface (Figs. 7 and 8). The two interfaces representing the sliding of the pad against the carrier (i7 and i8) are also modeled by translational displacement constraints. 5. Wear modeling The wear at the pad-to-rotor interface is modeled on a macro scale, i.e. not to a detailed molecular level. The basic modeling principle followed applies a phenomenological wear law on a local scale considering and following particular points on the contact surfaces, and nding a relation between the wear depth h at a particular point and the distance s that the point slides against the interacting surface. The wear process is analyzed as a dynamic process and the prediction of the process as an initial value problem. In these cases a wear model on the form dh = f (load, velocity, temperature, material parameters, . . .) (1) dt

During braking a point on the brake pad is in constant contact with the rotor, whereas a point on the rotor experiences intermittent contact. Although both rotor and brake pad are worn, only wear of the brake pad will be considered, by assuming the rotor has a much higher wear resistance. If only rigid body motion is considered, the sliding distance of a point at the brake pad surface corresponding to a small rotational displacement d of the rotor can be computed as ds = r d (4)

where r is radial location of the point with respect to the centre of the rotor. The pad is assumed to wear in the axial direction of the rotor, i.e. perpendicular to the rotor surface. A more correct procedure would be to assume that the pad surface is worn in the inwards direction of its local surface normal, which may vary over time due to uneven wear over the contact surface. The simplication is justied by the fact that the two contact surfaces are initially at and conformal, and that the expected wear depth is much smaller than the dimensions of the contact surface. 6. Wear simulation routine The simulation routine proposed by Podra and Andersson [9] is adopted to simulate the wear at the pad-to-rotor interface. Wear is viewed as a quasi-static process and is integrated as a postprocessing step in the nite element analysis. Similar simulation routines have been successfully used by other authors, although mostly for 2D FE models [10,11]. The simulation routine is implemented in ANSYS and works by looping through a series of static structural analyses of the FE model, each with an updated geometry of the pad surface (Fig. 9). Each step starts with a static structural analysis that computes the contact pressure at each of the surface nodes. With the nodal contact pressure known, the wear during the step is computed by numerical integration of Eq. (3) according to the explicit Euler integration scheme. The wear depth at node number i after the jth simulation step is then hi,j = hi,j1 + hi,j (5)

where hi,j1 is the wear depth after the (j 1)th step, hi,j is the incremental nodal wear depth during the jth step, computed based on the nodal pressure pi,j and the incremental nodal sliding distance si,j according to hi,j = kpi,j si,j (6)

Eq. (4) states that the incremental sliding distance of a node on the pad surface is proportional to its radial distance from the center of the rotor according to si,j = nj 2 ri (7)

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Fig. 8. Pad-to-rotor contact pressure distributions obtained through static structural analysis with applied normal brake force (left) and with both applied normal brake force and a small rotation of the rotor (right). In both simulations the coefcient of friction at pad-to-rotor interface is set to 0.45.

where nj is number of rotor revolutions during the jth step. At the end of each step the surface nodes of the brake pad are shifted inwards, depending on the amount of wear at that node. The shifting of the surface nodes may create a gap between the two contact surfaces, resulting in an open contact. This can cause convergence problems when re-solving the contact problem in the next step. To

avoid this, all components except the rotor are repositioned so that the contact is closed before the next step can be initialized. It should be noted that the FE model is not re-meshed between the steps. Since too large a wear depth could result in a distorted element mesh affecting the accuracy of the result, the model is only valid as long as the total wear depth is small compared to the height of element in the surface layer. Re-mesh routines have been successfully implemented in this kind of simulation [10], but at the cost of a steep increase in simulation complexity. Another factor that may inuence the accuracy of the result is the step length during the numerical integration. Too large a step could lead to poor accuracy, whereas too small a step length could result in unacceptably high computational time. Although it easy to see the benets of an adaptive step length algorithm, this strategy seems to be problem-dependent. In some cases it may be convenient to start with small steps in the initial phase that can be increased once the wear process stabilizes [10], whereas in other cases it may be better to use smaller steps in the nal part of the simulation to smooth out numerically induced surface waviness [11]. Here, for simplicity, a constant step length is used throughout the whole simulation and the simulation is stopped after a specied number of steps. The accuracy of the solution obtained can be evaluated by comparing solutions with different step lengths. Other interrupt conditions, such as a specied total wear depth, could also be implemented. After the simulation is stopped the result is post-processed with a specially developed software package in the mathematical programming langue MATLAB.

7. Simulation case The usefulness of the numerical wear model developed is demonstrated in a simulation case. The purpose of the simulation is to answer the design question: Does frictional traction at the padto-rotor interface affect the pressure distribution and the running-in process under steady-state drag conditions? Steady-state drag conditions refer to constant normal brake force and a constant rotational speed of the rotor. Although these conditions do not correspond to a real brake sequence, where both brake force and rotational speed vary with time, they may be used in laboratory test stands to evaluate friction and wear characteristics of pad and rotor materials (e.g. [12]). The deformable bodies of the subsystem are meshed with a characteristic mesh size of 3 mm. The back plate of the brake pad was assumed to have a Youngs modulus of 210 GPa and Poissons ratio of 0.3, whereas the pad was assumed to have a Youngs modulus of 10 GPa and Poissons ratio of 0.1. The wear resistance of the pad surface corresponded to a wear coefcient with a value of 1 1014 Pa1 and the pad-to-rotor interface was assumed to

Fig. 9. Wear simulation routine; all tasks in the gray box are performed in ANSYS.

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Fig. 10. Pad-to-rotor pressure distribution for wear simulation without the prescribed rotor displacement.

Fig. 11. Surface prole of brake pad for wear simulation without the prescribed rotor displacement.

Fig. 12. Pad-to-rotor pressure distribution for wear simulation with the prescribed rotor displacement.

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Fig. 13. Surface prole of brake pad for wear simulation with the prescribed rotor displacement.

have a friction coefcient with a value of 0.45. A normal brake force of 2.5 kN was applied on the piston, which corresponds to a hydraulic brake line pressure of 1 MPa. To simulate the effects of a sliding contact, a small rotational displacement of 0.01 degrees was applied to the rotor. The applied displacement was large enough to cause sliding over the whole contact, thus giving rise to frictional stresses at the interface corresponding to a fully sliding contact. To study how the frictional stresses affect the running-in process, two wear simulations were conducted: one with the prescribed displacement of the rotor and one without. The simulations were divided into 40 steps with 100 rotor revolutions per step. Each step corresponds to an approximate sliding distance of 75 m, adding up to a total sliding distance of approximately 2500 m. The simulations were performed on a laptop PC. The solution time in the simulation without prescribed displacement of the rotor was 3 min/step. In the simulation with rotor prescribed rotor displacement the solution time increased to 5 min/step. Results from the simulations, in the form of contact pressure distributions and the prole of the contact surface, are shown in Figs. 1013. In the simulation without any prescribed displacement, the elastic deformation of the steel plate results in a symmetric but non-uniform initial pressure distribution with high pressure levels directly under the piston and nearly no contact at all at the edges. Looking at the surface prole we can see that the deepest wear occurs in the zone with high pressure, while there is almost no wear at all at the edge. After about 1600 revolutions the process seems to have reached a steady state where all points on the surfaces have the same wear rate (i.e. the wear process is progressing without any change in pressure distribution or surface prole). The steady-state pressure distribution shows a small negative gradient in the radial direction, compensating for variation in sliding distances over the interface. Turning to the result from the simulation with prescribed rotation, we see that the induced frictional traction has shifted the pressure distribution toward the leading edge of the contact, leaving an open contact at the end. This asymmetrical pressure distribution results in a longer running-in process, but as the wear process progresses the area of contact increases and the pressure distribution becomes more uniform. After about 2400 revolutions the wear process seems to have reached a steady state. In this simulation the pressure distribution has the same gradient as in the previous simulation, but the contact surface has a completely different prole.

8. Conclusions and discussion This paper discusses how general purpose nite element analysis software can be used to analyze the pad-to-rotor contact interface in passenger car disc brakes. A FE-based model of a subsystem consisting of the piston, the brake pad and the rotor has been developed using a modular modeling approach. The system model is built up of component models with mating features coupled by interface models. The model can be used to study the behavior of the pad-to-contact interface under different loads and running conditions. In its present state the model is very simplied and is therefore only suitable for design trend analysis, not for prediction of absolute values. A wear simulation routine has also been adopted in which the FE model is used to compute the pad-to-rotor pressure distribution. Based on the resulting distribution, the wear of the brake pad is computed using a generalized form of Archards wear law and an explicit Euler integration scheme. The usefulness of the model and the wear simulation routine is shown in a simulation case addressing running-in wear under steady-state drag conditions. Comparison of the results from simulations with and without any prescribed rotational displacement of the rotor indicates that the frictional force at the sliding contact surface may signicantly affect the pressure distribution and the wear process. This force should thus be included in analysis of the pad-to-rotor interface. A major simplication in the wear routine presented is that it only simulates wear of the brake pad. A natural next step is to expand the simulation routine to consider wear at both contact surfaces. Another simplication in the present FE model is that both the piston and the rotor are represented as rigid bodies. If wear of the rotor is to be included in the model, it would also be interesting to study how elastic deformation of the rotor surface affects the contact conditions. This design question will require an alternative FE representation of the rotor, modeling it as a deformable body. This will increase the complexity of the model by adding additional degrees of freedom, but may yield important information about the system. It can also be noted that simplied material models are used for the deformable bodies in the system. This might be acceptable for the steel plate. However, it is attractive to implement a more realistic and probably also more complex material model describing the behavior of the composite friction material in the brake pad. The same can be argued for the wear model. In this work a linear wear model is used to simulate the wear of brake pad. The model

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was chosen based on its simplicity. It is also possible to implement other more complex wear models in the wear simulation routine. Finally, it should be noted that no thermoelastic effects have been included in the model. Thermoelastic effects may be important because the frictional heat at the contact surface may lead to thermal expansion of the pad material, which could affect the behavior of the interface. References
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