Efficient and safe braking is a critical factor in determining the performance of a vehicle. In a conventional brake system, the pistons push the brake pad to the disc, converting the kinetic energy into heat energy.

This nonlinear finite element (FEA) model has been built to help the client understand the behavior of a brake piston made out of a novel material. Contact between the wall of the piston and the caliper is taken into account, as well as the friction contact between the piston base and the disk. Finally, topology optimization has been applied to find innovative shapes.

Piston, disk and caliper assembly

The model helped the client in several aspects:

• Validate the use of a new material
• Finding new shapes using topology optimization
• Fine-tune the design using parametric optimization

All this translated into a reduction of the tedious and costly prototyping phase

Parametric optimization

Radial deformation of the piston