Precise braking operations are pivotal to ensure safety in modern day vehicle designs. Brakes are mechanical devices for increasing the frictional resistance that obstructs the turning motion of vehicle wheels by absorbing either kinetic, potential energy or both while in action. This absorbed energy appears in the form of heat. Stress, distribution of friction on surface, frictional heat generation, material and geometry are the major controlling factors for efficiency of braking operations. Frictional heat generation and its effective dissipation is one of the most predominant of these factors and hence it is the focus of this study. The purpose of this study is to analyze the thermal behavior of a full bicycle disc brake using finite element method. Sequential thermal structured method based on Ansys 14.5 is used to carry out the numerical simulation for evaluating the variation of total heat flux and temperature profiles with respect to time. The analysis model was studied experimentally and results obtained by numerical analysis were within 3% of the experimental result for maximum temperature. The model is thus adequately validated to be followed for a similar analysis on bicycle brakes.
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