MEE 305 DESIGN

PROJECT

DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF ROTOR

OF A DISC BRAKE

Project done by:

1. A SAI DHEERAJ 14BME0922

2. V VIVEK 14BME0924

3. PEEYUSH DEWANGAN 14BME0457

GUIDE: PROF. G. KALAIRASSAN

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.ABSTRACT .................................................................................. 3

2.INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... 3

3.LITERATURE SURVEY .............................................................. 6

4.WORK DONE SO FAR ................................................................ 7

5.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .................................................... 9

6.CONCLUSION ........................................................................... 10

7.LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................ 10

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1.Abstract
Technical advancements have been taking place continuously in the
automotive industry and companies put a lot of effort to showcase the
maximum speed a vehicle can reach to get an edge over their
competitors. Thus nowadays all the vehicles need to have excellent
braking systems. Disc brakes in vehicles give much better
performance compared to drum brakes to stop the vehicle and the heat
generated during the braking force can also be easily removed as disk
brakes are open to the atmosphere. The objective of the project is to
compare the various forces obtained for different materials of rotor
using the design parameters and construct a part model in CAD
software- SolidWorks and analysis software ANSYS and hence
determine safe forces, factor of safety for various materials and the
best material to be chosen amongst them to be used for rotor in disc
brakes.

2.Introduction
The disc brake is a wheel brake which slows rotation of the wheel by
the friction caused by pushing brake pads against a brake disc with a
set of callipers. Disc-style brakes development and use began in
England in the 1890s. The first calliper-type automobile disc brake
was patented by Frederick William Lanchester in his Birmingham,
UK.
The main components of Brake Disc are:
1) Brake Pedal: It is designed for the purpose of harnessing and
multiplying the force exerted by the driver's foot.
2) Master Cylinder: It is responsible for the conversion of increased
force from the brake pedal into hydraulic pressure. It consists of a
cylinder, a piston and a brake pedal output rod on one side with brake
fluid on the other side of the cylinder. When the pedal assembly
output rod presses the plunger, it moves within the cylinder and

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presses against the fluid creating a hydraulic pressure. Its size varies
for different vehicles to different values.
3) Callipers: The calliper is very similar to a piston with pressurized
fluid on one side. It uses hydraulic force on the input to create
mechanical work. The calliper exerts a clamping force on the brake
disk.
4) Brake pads: They are responsible for exerting friction forces to
slow down/ stop the rotor.
5) Rotor: The rotor is the component which receives the force applied
by the brake pads when the brake pedal is pressed by the driver and
the piston is activated producing the calliper to close. It plays two
important roles.
Firstly, it acts like a frictional interface for the brake pads. It reacts to
the output by absorbing the torque generated. Secondly, it also serves
the purpose of absorbing the heat generated by rubbing of the brake
pads against the rotors face.
The material generally used is grey cast iron. The design of the disc
varies it may be solid or hollow with fins joining together the disc's
two contact surfaces. The ventilated disc design helps to dissipate the
generated heat and is commonly used on the more-heavily-loaded
front discs.

Parts of a Disc brake

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Compared to cars, motorcycles have a higher centre of mass and
wheelbase ratio, so they experience more transfer of weight when
braking. Front brakes absorb most of the braking forces, while the
rear brake serves mainly to balance the motorcycle during braking.
Unlike car disc brakes that are buried within the wheel, bike disc
brakes are in the airstream and have optimum cooling. Although cast
iron discs have a porous surface which gives superior braking
performance, such discs rust in the rain and become unsightly.
Accordingly, motorcycle discs are usually stainless steel, drilled,
slotted or wavy to disperse rain water. Modern motorcycle discs tend
to have a floating design whereby the disc will float on bobbins and
can move slightly, allowing better disc-centring with a fixed calliper.
A floating disc also avoids disc warping and reduces heat transfer to
the wheel hub.

Disc Brake Setup on front wheel of a Two-Wheeler

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Disc brakes are nowadays very much used on large and heavy road
vehicles. One reason is that the disc's lack of self-assist makes brake
force much more predictable, so peak brake force can be raised
without more risk of braking-induced steering on articulated vehicles.
Another reason is disc brakes fade less when hot, and in a heavy
vehicle air and rolling drag and engine braking are small parts of total
braking force, so brakes are used harder than on lighter vehicles, and
drum brake fade can occur in a single stop. For these reasons, a heavy
truck with disc brakes can stop in about 120% the distance of a
passenger car, but with drum brakes stopping takes about 150% the
distance.
We will be testing several materials which can be used for our rotor.
One of them is Al6061/Graphite. Aluminium alloy materials found to
be the best alternative with its unique capacity of designing the
materials to give required properties. Al6061/Graphite is extremely
versatile heat treatable aluminium alloy. It has a wide range of
mechanical and corrosion resistance properties as well as having most
of the good qualities of aluminium. It is used in many applications
from aircraft structures, yacht construction, truck bodies, bicycles etc.
Composite materials provide unique combination of properties whose
values will be found in this project and also their application in disc
brake rotors will be found.

3.Literature Survey
A solid rotor is simply a solid piece of metal with friction surface on
each side and this type of rotor is light, simple, cheap, and easy to
manufacture. A ventilated disc meanwhile refers to the brake disc
or rotor with various opening profiles (holes, grooves, etc.) which
provide better cooling performance (additional heat transfer function)
and weight savings as well as aesthetic appearance (Jacobsson, 2003).
The main function of disc brake rotor is for transmission of
mechanical force and dissipation of heat produced implies to be
functioning at both medium and high temperature. The rotor provides
braking surface or friction surface for brake pads to rub against it

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when brake is applied. A disc brake rotor is generally made from grey
cast iron due to cast iron provides good wear resistance with high
thermal conductivity and the production cost is low compared to other
disc brake rotor materials
such as Al-MMC, carbon composites and ceramic based composites
(Jang et.al, 2003).
Ventilated disc brake generally exhibit convective heat transfer
coefficient that is approximately twice as large as those associated
with solid discs. During a continued braking, a ventilated disc usually
tends to reach a temperature which is approximately 60% of the
temperature of a solid disc. (Abu et.al , 2010)
A review of disc materials used by the automotive industry today will
show that there are two basic material philosophies. The first, used for
family sized vehicles, operates on the principal of small diameter,
high strength, discs with sufficient inherent strength to resist any
tendency towards the formation of thermal cracking, and distortion at
high operating temperatures. These discs whilst having good strength
properties have relatively low thermal conductivity. The second
principle, that of large weaker, low strength discs with high thermal
conductivity, has been applied more commonly, to the larger high
powered type of vehicle where space constraints are not so critical,
and as a consequence, a large diameter thicker discs can be
employed.( MP Macnaughtan,1987)
Reports have shown that AMC discs show lower friction coefficients
and higher wear rates than classical steel discs. The friction
coefficient of AMC is 25- 30% times that of cast Iron and better wear
characteristics. An MMC disc could be 60 % lighter than an
equivalent cast iron component .Each of these materials has proven to
have advantages and disadvantages regarding wear, noise and
stopping capability etc( Laden K et.al,2000).

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4.Work Done So Far
First of all the design calculations have been done for the rotor of the
disc brake. In these calculations following have been calculated:
1. Braking force
2. Stopping distance
3. Brake torque and
4. Factor of safety.
In braking force, the amount of force that is to be applied to
overcome kinetic energy present at any time is calculated. In order to
stop the vehicle, certain amount of breaking force is applied and this
force has to be within permissible pressure of rotor to consider it as
safe design.
Stopping distance is the minimum distance taken by moving vehicle
to come to rest. For a certain speed and mass there will be a minimum
stopping distance and trying to reduce this value to even lesser will
lead to design failure.
Relation between Brake torque and dimensions of rotor has been
observed. In order to generate maximum possible stopping torque at
any instance the radius of rotor has to be kept as high as possible. This
has adjusted accordingly such that the average surface temperature
increases with increase in diameter of brake rotor.
Factor of safety (FOS) or safety factor is a term describing the load
carrying capacity of a system beyond the expected or actual load. This
factor is calculated theoretically using Mohrs formula and
Goodmans modified formula to get safety factor under static and
dynamic loading conditions respectively.
CAD software SOLIDWORKS has been used in order to form a 3-D
model of the rotor of the required dimensions. For the chosen rotor,
Diameter = 240 mm, Thickness = 3.5 mm.

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 Model of rotor of disc-brake done using SOLIDWORKS

5.Results and Discussion

This project deals with finding safe braking force along with factor of
safety that can be applied onto the rotor via brake pads so that the
there will be no failure of either rotor or any type of wear in case of
brake pads for a two wheeler.
Various suitable materials that can be used are also verified so that the
best material amongst them can be chosen as the material for rotor.
Using the strength of materials approach, we calculated the factor of
safety values for the following materials:
For Grey Cast Iron:
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n = 5.617(against static yielding) and n = 1.237(against fatigue
failure)
For Carbon/Carbon:
n = 0.461(against static yielding) and n = 0.078(against fatigue
failure)
For Carbon Ceramic(C/SiC):
n= 0.638(against static yielding) and n =0.16(against fatigue failure)
For Aluminium Matrix Composite Al6061/Graphite (with graphite
content at 4%) we found
n = 4.14(against static yielding) and n = 0.789(against fatigue failure)

6.Conclusion
3-D model of the rotor of the required dimensions was created using
SolidWorks. Design calculations were done and braking force and
factor of safety were calculated. Further stress analysis will be done
using ANSYS which will determine the best material required for the
rotor.

7.List of References
1. Jacobsson. H. 2003. Aspects of Disc Brake Judder. Professional
Engineering Publishing, Volume 217. Number 6. pp. 419-430
2. Jang, J. H. Yoon, S. J. Kim, J. Y. Lee and H. D. Park. 2003. The
Effect of Composition and Microstructure of Gray Cast Iron on
Preferential Wear During Parasitic Drag and on Intrinsic Damping
Capacity. SAE
Technical Paper Series. SAE 2003-01-3313.

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3. Design and Analysis of Disc Brake Swapnil R. Abhang,
D.P.Bhaskar(International Journal of Engineering Trends and
Technology (IJETT) Volume 8 Number 4- Feb 2014)
4. MP Macnaughtan, Cast iron a brake disc material for the
future, Precision Disc Castings Limited, Poole, UK,1987
5. Laden K. ,Guerin J.D. , Watremez M. and Bricout J.P.; Frictional
Characteristics of Al-Sic Composite Brake Discs, Tribology Letters
8,pp 233-237,2000
6. Sowjanya K., S.Suresh, structural analysis of disc brake rotor,
IJCTT,July 2013,vol. 4 Issue 7, pp 2295-2298.

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