Brake squeal reduction of vehicle disc brake system with interval parameters by uncertain optimization

An uncertain optimization method for brake squeal reduction of vehicle disc brake system with interval parameters is presented in this paper. In the proposed method, the parameters of frictional coefficient, material properties and the thicknesses of wearing components are treated as uncertain parameters, which are described as interval variables. Attention is focused on the stability analysis of a brake system in squeal, and the stability of brake system is investigated via the complex eigenvalue analysis (CEA) method. The dominant unstable mode is extracted by performing CEA based on a linear finite element (FE) model, and the negative damping ratio corresponding to the dominant unstable mode is selected as the indicator of instability. The response surface method (RSM) is applied to approximate the implicit relationship between the unstable mode and the system parameters. A reliability-based optimization model for improving the stability of the vehicle disc brake system with interval parameters is constructed based on RSM, interval analysis and reliability analysis. The Genetic Algorithm is used to get the optimal values of design parameters from the optimization model. The stability analysis and optimization of a disc brake system are carried out, and the results show that brake squeal propensity can be reduced by using stiffer back plates. The proposed approach can be used to improve the stability of the vehicle disc brake system with uncertain parameters effectively. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.