Model updating of brake components' influence on instability predictions

Customers perceive brake squeal as a major annoyance in their automobiles' acoustic performance. Squeal is self-excited, friction induced audible noise above 1 kHz and one of the strongest cost drivers in noise vibration and harshness departments of automotive manufacturers. In order to reduce expensive and time-consuming dynamometer and road vehicle tests, numerical complex eigenvalue analysis has become popular in predicting brake squeal. However, one difficulty in assessing the prediction quality apart from the linearisation of the system is the complexity of the brake system to be modelled. Using structural finite elements the computer model is often insufficiently detailed, insufficiently damped or insufficiently experimentally validated so that instabilities causing brake squeal are over-predicted. Here we present the process of updating components of a brake system's squeal prediction and the improvement in modelling using updated material parameters and a Rayleigh damping model by applying a rigorous mesh refinement study and different friction laws