Preventing Drum Brake Squeal through Lining Modifications

Drum brake squeal is one of the most common and annoying types of brake noise and it usually falls in the frequency range between 0.5-16 kHz. Brake squeal continues to confront vehicle manufacturers where it not only leads to significant increase in the warranty costs but also may affect customer's perception on quality of the vehicle. Thus this paper attempts to prevent drum brake squeal by means of lining modifications. In doing so, finite element method is first employed and squeal noise will be then predicted using complex eigenvalue (CE) analysis. A good lining modification should be able to stabilize the drum brake assembly by shifting or reducing positive real parts toward zero or negative real parts in the eigenvalue analysis. Finally, laboratory squeal tests are conducted on the four proposed modifications to verify its effectiveness against squeal.