Improvement of Tread brake Heat Dissipation Using Forced Air Cooling

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Date

2015-06

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Publisher

Addis Ababa University

Abstract

Sufficient heat dissipation is crucial to the effective operation of friction based braking systems. Such cooling is generally provided by ensuring a sufficient supply of cooling air to the heated components, hence the aerodynamics in the region of the brake components is extremely important. The objective of the research was to develop an understanding of how forced air vented from the brake pipe and main reserviore could be used to improve the cooling of train tread brake. The thermal analyses of tread brake during emergency braking at a speed of 100 km/h considering forced air cooling were investigated using finite element (FE) and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. The results suggested that the higher convection coefficients achieved with forced air cooling will not only reduce the maximum temperature in the braking but also reduce the thermal gradients, since heat will be removed faster from hotter parts of the tread brake. Forced air cooling should be effective to reduce the risk of hot spot formation and tread wheel thermal distortion. The highest temperature after emergency braking was 432.43 °C and 412.75 °C , 399.13 °C and 384.81°C without and with considering forced air cooling with velocities of (50,100 and 150 m/s) , respectively. The main purpose of this study is to improve the heat dissipation of tread brake by using forced air cooling from the brake pipe and main reservoir.

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Keywords

heat dissipation, convection heat transfer coefficient, temperature, total heat flux and CFD (computational fluid dynamics)

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