Influence of material properties on sliding contact braking applications

In sliding contact, conditions such as pressure and temperature are affected by geometry as well as by material properties and boundary conditions. Simulations have been performed to investigate the effects of material properties and geometry on pressure and temperature. In addition, a favourable set of material parameters has been obtained using an optimisation method called multilevel coordinate search (MCS). The design parameters were found to affect the contact conditions to varying degrees. The ones that were found to have the most significant effect on contact temperature were the coefficient of friction, and specific heat. The pressure, on the other hand, is most affected by thermal expansion and the coefficient of wear.