Innovative Technical Solutions to Improve the Cooling Efficiency of Friction Brake Elements

Abstract

The article deals with the problem of friction brake elements cooling while braking. A significant increase in temperature on the brake elements surface dramatically reduces the friction coefficient. This negatively affects the braking performance, leads to wear increasing, cracks formation and to the failure of entire brake system. This way, vehicle safety can be reduced. While braking, it is necessary to stabilize the temperature of the brake friction elements. Nowadays, the most common construction to ensure stable operation of brake elements are using ventilated discs. The cooling of the discs is intensified by means of ventilation channels of various geometry types. The main advantage of this design is that disc cooling surface works when braking up to certain speed. But the significant disadvantage is that train movement resistance is increased because of air pumping effect also when discs does not need to be cooled. This paper proposed several methods for the brake friction elements temperature stabilizing by increasing the air circulation along brake disc vanes, as well as by using additional phase transition materials in brake pads.