Thermal fatigue life prediction of brake disks based on coupled thermal simulation

Abstract

The thermal-mechanical performance of friction pairs of the foundation brake gear is an important guarantee for the safe operation of high-speed trains. The thermal stress of brake disks under high temperature is the primary cause of thermal fatigue damage. In this article, the brake bench tests were carried out under braking speed of 350km/h and a thermo-mechanical-wear coupled model was established to simulate tests. By analyzing the results of bench test and finite element simulation, it shows the top temperature of brake disk was over 600°Cand the friction surfaces of brake friction pair show obvious wear. Combining the FE simulation and test results of the thermal fatigue sample, the thermal fatigue characteristics of brake disk material were studied. Based on the residual stress results, the propagation life of brake disk thermal fatigue crack was estimated. It shows that when the crack length increases to 10mm, the crack propagation life of brake disk is halved, and continues to decrease as the crack grows.

Keywords:

• Coupled thermal simulation
• crack propagation life
• high-speed emergency braking
• thermal fatigue performance

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Additional information

Funding

The research work is supported by National Key R&D Program of China [2021YFB3703805] and Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Research Center for Multi-network & Multi-modal Rail Transit.