Modeling the Cooling of an Automotive Brake Rotor 951116

Computational and experimental studies were conducted to investigate the heating and cooling of and automotive brake rotor. The experimental study was conducted in order to validate the computational results. Brake rotor temperature was the main response used to prove correlation between the two studies. The objective of the computational model was to consider fluid flow conjugate with heat transfer. To accomplish this, Navier Stokes' equations [1][2] were solved to predict the fluid flow field of the model geometry. This is commonly known as Computational Fluid Dynamics. The results from the fluid flow at the solid-fluid interface was used to calculate heat transfer coefficients for the solid surfaces. These heat transfer coefficients were then used to predict heat exchange between the fluid and solid. Three dimensional conduction and convection were used to compute heat transfer within the fluid and solid.