Disc brakes convert kinetic energy into thermal energy in order to slow down vehicles. During the braking process enormous heat flows and temperature gradients occur in the system. Because heating leads to a change in shape for most materials, it is important to take the temperature and its influence into account during the design process. The interaction between the structure and the heat in disc brakes can be described with methods from thermoelasticity. To simulate thermoelastic behaviour the Finite Element Method is commonly used. The thermal and mechanical domain are taken into account by coupling the equation of motion and the heat equation. However, in transient analysis often the problem occurs of different time scales of the structural and thermal dynamics for many technically relevant materials, like steel. For metallic materials the time constant of structural dynamics is much smaller than those of thermal dynamics. This complicates an efficient transient simulation. In the present work the implementation of a Finite Element Method in thermoelasticity and associated investigations are shown. The method is applied to various parts and load cases. Also different approaches to deal with the different time scales will be shown. Heuristic methods like mass-scaling as well as more mathematically oriented approaches like model order reduction are presented.

Brake squeal describes noise with different frequencies that can be emitted during the braking process. Typically, the frequencies are in the range of 1 to 16 kHz. Although the noise has virtually no effect on braking performance, strong attempts are made to identify and eliminate the noise as it can be very unpleasant and annoying. In the field of numerical simulation, the brake is typically modeled using the Finite Element method, and this results in a high‐dimensional equation of motion. For the analysis of brake squeal, gyroscopic and circulatory effects, as well as damping and friction, must be considered correctly. For the subsequent analysis, the high‐dimensional damped nonlinear equation system is linearized. This results in terms that are non‐symmetric and dependent on the rotational frequency of the brake rotor. Many parameter points to be evaluated implies many evaluations to determine the relevant parameters of the unstable system. In order to increase the efficiency of the process, the system is typically reduced with a truncated modal transformation. However, with this method the damping and the velocity‐dependent terms, which have a significant influence on the system, are neglected for the calculation of the eigenmodes, and this can lead to inaccurate reduced models. In this paper, we present results of other methods of model order reduction applied on an industrial high‐dimensional brake model. Using moment matching methods combined with parametric model order reduction, both the damping and the various parameter‐dependent terms of the brake model can be taken into account in the reduction step. Thus, better results in the frequency domain can be obtained. On the one hand, as usual in brake analysis, the complex eigenvalues are evaluated, but on the other hand also the transfer behavior in terms of the frequency response. In each case, the classical and the new reduction method are compared with each other.

In this contribution, investigations on model order reduction for coupled systems composed from components of a passenger car are shown. In today's development processes, the simulation of mechanical components is indispensable and large Finite Element models are often used for this purpose. For the calculation of time-domain or frequency-domain analyses, for example, a lot of computing power is required. However, with the application of model order reduction methods, this effort can be reduced, but this results in a trade-off between the reduction error and the computational time. Since the computation of reduction bases for complete systems can be computationally expensive, it is of interest to be able to reduce components individually and then assemble them into a reduced overall model. This can result in both, a saving of computational effort when creating the bases, as well as a saving of the required memory space. Furthermore, there are many possible combinations of components in the modular systems of today's automotive industry, which emphasizes the model order reduction by parts and not by assemblies. In this work, methods of model order reduction for coupled systems are presented and will be tested on components in the chassis of a sports car. Therefore, an assembly consisting of a brake disc and wheel rim together with the wheel hub are investigated. For this purpose, the eigenmodes and transfer functions of the overall model, the reduced overall model and the assembly built from individual reduced bodies are compared.

Transient dynamical-thermoelastic-optical system simulation is an important expansion of classical ray tracing through rigid, resting lenses because the operating performance of high-precision optical systems can be influenced by dynamical excitations or thermal gradients. In this paper an approach for an integrated optical system simulation using the coupling of elastic multibody system simulations, thermoelastic finite element analysis and gradient-index ray tracing is presented. Transient mechanical rigid body motions and elastic deformations, thermally induced refraction index changes, and thermal elastic deformations can be considered simultaneously in the ray tracing using the presented method. The calculation of the dynamical and thermal disturbances, the data transfer and coupling, and the gradient index ray tracing method are introduced. Finally, the approach is applied on a transient triplet lens optical system and some investigation results are shown.