Coupled Thermo-Mechanical and Wear Effects on the Analysis of High Speed Railway Brake Systems

The high speed railway brakes transfer a large amount of kinetic energy into heat. The temperature during a brake operation could reach values higher than 90 °C. The dynamics of the brake system is rather complicated with respect to the multiphysical phenomena. In this paper, the thermo-mechanical coupling are investigated combined with the loos of brake material due to wear. The coupled model is discretized by conventional finite element method. Different coupled algorithms have been tested. Various scenarios have been simulated and shown reasonable results. The temperature and deformation on pad and disc, especially the thermal deformation of disc the so–called coning effect can also be prescribed with this coupled multiphysics model. Furthermore, the tapered wear on brake pads is also discussed as a requirement of railway brake design in terms of durability. Thereby, the Ehlers's model is normally used to minimize tapered wear by selecting an adequate point of applied braking force. An extended Ehlers's model is also presented here, which concerns wear effect based on Archard's model. (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)