Tyre and brake thermal management in NASCAR

• Published in: Vehicle system dynamics Vol. 63; no. 2; pp. 398 - 423
• Main Authors: Limebeer, D.J.N., Dollar, R.A., Sivaramakrishnan, S., Gordhan, N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Taylor & Francis 01.02.2025; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: brake disc thermal modelling; Brake disks; brake heating; Callipers; Constraints; generation 7 NASCAR; Heating; Knowledge management; optimal control; Race cars; Thermal management; Thermal transients; Thermal tyre model; Tires; tyre friction; tyre wear; Wear rate
• ISSN: 0042-3114; 1744-5159
• DOI: 10.1080/00423114.2024.2342534

The need to manage race car tyres is routine faire and several academic papers have already appeared on this topic. We contribute to this literature with refined tyre grip and wear-rate models. Less well known is a methodology for managing the thermal transients in the car's braking system. This knowledge gap is addressed with a physically-based disc-and-calliper brake-heating model. The parameters in each of the models are optimised against measurement data captured on an instrumented Generation 7 (Gen 7) NASCAR driven on the Darlington speedway. These models are replicated on each corner of the vehicle. The remainder of the paper is directed to studying the minimum lap time performance of a Gen 7 NASCAR that is subject to tyre wear and temperature variations; brake heating influences are emphasised. Due to their novelty, the results focus on the performance impact of temperature variations and constraints on the front brake disc temperatures. Constraints on the brake temperatures are introduced to protect the brakes from fade and thermally-induced damage.