A Study on The Effects of Different Pad Materials on Brake System Performance of a High-Capacity Elevator by FEM Simulation

The brake system must be reliable and display unchanging action throughout its use, as it guards the health and life of many people. Properly matched friction pair, a drum, and a brake pad have a great impact on these factors. The brake pads are far more complex components. New technologies make it possible to develop materials with various compositions and different proportions and connect them permanently in fully controllable processes. This elaboration shows that all these factors have a greater or lesser impact on the coefficient of friction, resistance to friction wear and high temperature, and the brake pad’s operating life. The friction materials are required to provide a stable coefficient of friction and a low wear rate at various operating speeds, pressures, temperatures, and environmental conditions. The aim of this work is therefore to investigate the possibility of using a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) approach to evaluate the braking performance of a heavy-duty elevator with different non-conventional pad materials including Composite Carbon fiber reinforced, Composite Epoxy SMC and SiC (silicon carbide). The results show that the performance of SiC (silicon carbide) is better than two other materials. In the braking system with SiC, the required time for stoppage of the system is lower than two other materials.