PREDICTION OF RAILWAY DISC BRAKE TEMPERATURES TAKING THE BEARING SURFACE VARIATIONS INTO ACCOUNT

For several years, increasing velocities and loads on modern trains ha ve pushed the braking materials more and more to their limits. The tem peratures reached by disc brakes are very difficult to predict locally because of the discontinuous contact surface between disc and pads an d because of the non-uniform pressure distribution on this surface. Th is contact problem may also vary rapidly with time during a single bra king and from one braking to the next one. The present work proposes a two-dimensional numerical approach calculating the evolution of the b earing surface between disc and pad, with an impact-contact analysis c oupled with a thermomechanical resolution. The distribution and the ev olution of the temperatures are calculated and compared to experimenta l measurements. The method can be used to assess the performance of br aking systems and gives valuable indications for braking design.