Research

Dynamics of Brakes

Brake squeal is a high frequency noise (1-12 kHz) of brake systems. It does not affect the performance of the brake but is detrimental to the passenger's comfort and the subjective quality of the vehicle. Due to the fact that the source and mechanism of generating brake squeal is not completely understood yet, the design of disk brakes of modern passenger cars demands a significant amount of costly experiments.

The research of the Dynamics Group involves theoretical and experimental investigations of brake squeal. Special regard is given to the excitation mechanism of brake squeal, the modeling of disk brakes with respect to squeal in general and the experimental validation of these models. Furthermore a structural optimization of automotive and bicycle brake disks is studied to avoid squealing passively. Currently treated topics are:

– minimal models for brake squeal
– identification and evaluation of brake systems
– model based active and passive suppression of brake squeal
– structural optimization of brake disks

Students who are interested in writing a thesis, a seminar paper or in doing an advanced design project about these topics, should not hesitate to contact one of the members of the group or Prof. Peter Hagedorn directly