Motorcycle brake squeal: experimental and numerical investigation on a case study

Since, nowadays, the NVH performance of a vehicle is one of the most important priorities for the market, the noise radiating from disc brakes is considered a source of considerable discomfort and customer dissatisfaction. Squeal is an example of noise, caused by vibrations induced by friction forces, in which the vibration modes of the brake disc are coupled to those of the friction pads or of the caliper. In this work a case study, in which the squeal phenomenon was detected after changing the supplier of the disc pads, is presented. A test bench was purposely developed to investigate the squeal phenomenon; tests at different rotating speeds and pressures in the brake circuit were carried out employing different friction pads. The experimental apparatus appeared capable of reproducing the phenomenon observed in real practice and to investigate the effect of operating parameters and different components on the onset of instability. Friction tests and geometric analysis of the friction pads were also carried out to complete the investigation. At the same time, a finite element (FE) complex eigenvalue parametric analysis was performed on the brake assembly. The different propensity of the pads to squeal was attributed to differences in their geometry and in their friction coefficients. The FE analysis, confirmed the experimental observations and indicated possible design improvements to increase the stability of the system.