The Role of Secondary Flows and Separation in Convective Heat Transfer in a Rotating Radial Vane Brake Disk

This study presents, for the first time, distributions of local internal temperature and convective heat transfer in a rotating radial vane brake disk and explains mechanisms in conjunction with secondary flows and flow separation within its ventilated coolant passages. In particular, variations of radial, circumferential (vane-to-vane), and axial (inboard-to-outboard) heat transfer on internal end-wall surfaces, and their alteration due to varying number of radial vanes and rotating speed are experimentally detailed. It has been demonstrated that conventional ventilated radial brake disks where the air inflow is drawn from the inboard face are likely to suffer substantial axial variations of temperature and heat transfer between the inboard and outboard disks, which possibly exacerbates thermal distortion (i.e., coning). Further, for a typical number of vanes (i.e., 36 vanes) used on automobiles, internal thermal distributions are highly nonuniform. However, the thermal end-wall uniformity improves considerably as the number of vanes is increased to say 72 vanes. Specifically, as the number of vanes is increased, secondary flow mixing enhances overall convective heat transfer and improves thermal uniformity. In contrast, separation causes large end-wall thermal nonuniformities in radial and circumferential distributions between the pressure side and the suction side of radial vanes. This effect nonetheless also decreases as the number of vanes is increased.