Computer Aided Design and Evaluation of the Thermal Properties of Automotive Brake Disc and Pad Produced from Locally Sourced Materials

There is a growing need to develop brake pads and brake discs for automobiles using materials from sustainable local resources. This is so because such resources can replace the asbestos brake pad which is not environmentally sustainable. This aim of this study is to investigate the thermal properties of locally sourced, cost effective materials for the development of brake disc and pads discs. The Abaqus tool explicit mode was used for the modelling and simulation of the designed components using various materials. The brake disc and brake pad components were designed separately and compiled into a single design. For the meshing, the Computer Aided Design (CAD) model was meshed into a Finite Element (FE) by applying the mesh module with a mesh interval of 0.2 mm and a mesh size of 2.2 mm. Thereafter, a comparative analysis of the simulation performance was performed in order to establish the performance effectiveness of the brake disk and brake pad of the various materials under the required service conditions. The findings of this study indicate that Al-MMC seems to be a good material for a disc and the Kevlar 29 brake pad compound seems to be a good material for the pad. Thus, this study can assist the automobile brake mechanism developers in the selection of the most suitable brake disc and pads that will meet the designed and service requirements.