Design and Finite Element Analysis of Carbon Fibre Rotor Lug

A brake is a device for slowing or stopping the motion of a machine or vehicle, or restraining it from starting to move again. The basic principle behind any braking operation is to create a controlled friction process that increases the rate of deceleration. Acceleration converts heat energy into motion. Deceleration converts motion into heat energy. Since the rotor and stator assembly account for an important fraction of whole landing gear weight, a constant effort has been made to decrease their weight through the application of advanced composite materials namely, carbon composite materials. The important properties of carbon fibers such as small size, lesser weight, are used to optimize the rotor to meet the aircraft braking requirements. The present study focus on the root cause analysis to identify the reasons for failure in the existing rotor assembly and also to propose a new optimum design solution to overcome the same field problem. The present research focuses on 3 major sections: 1) Field failure analysis to investigate the carbon damage, 2) Composite carbon rotor load distribution analysis and 3) Carbon fatigue strength analysis to meet the minimum strength requirements. The principal challenge in modeling composite carbon rotor and stator assembly which will be forced together to generate the friction, which is converted into heat creates lot of bending and shear loads on the root lug assembly. Complex analysis modeling for composite material is carried out in ANSYS in order to perform the various design iterations to predict the best design solution to overcome the failures.