Brake Fade Reduction in a Brake Drum System for Motorcycles

摘要

In developing countries, motorcycles have become the most economically efficient choice for commuting. A variety of braking systems in motorcycles like Brake drum and Disk brake have once again become the deciding criteria for wise economic selection of a motorcycle. Due to the low cost of a brake drum compared with a disk brake, a median income group customer segment commonly prefers to buy the brake drum versions rather than disk brake. However the performance of the brake drum is inferior to the disk brake. One major inferior performance feature is brake fade. For a target customer segment, it always becomes a challenge for OEMs to provide the desired braking at sufficiently low costs for customers of that segment, while with the drum braking system, usually the user ends up with loss of brake effectiveness due to overheating, which in turn is produced by repeated braking actions. In this paper, a methodology to minimize brake fade was devised. By redesigning the brake drum (BD) for enhanced cooling effect, brake fade has been minimized. We have verified the results of enhanced cooling with respect to the existing design of the BD with software simulation.