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Among many NVH problems brake squeal continues to be a difficult topic for design engineers and scientists. Both the experimental and the simulation approaches so far have failed to provide robust and reliable guidelines for the design of squeal free brakes. On the experimental side the problem clearly lies in the wide range of operating conditions which the brake encounters in its lifetime, in which it should be squeal free. From lab experiments alone, it is hardly possible to judge how far the system is from squeal, which implies that an extremely wide range of conditions is mandatory. Brake squeal simulation presents different challenges. Once a model for the brake has been formulated, including the excitation mechanism(s), it should be possible to check the robustness of a given design and system parameters against squeal. Complex eigenvalue analysis has become a standard industrial tool for squeal prediction, and is routinely applied to the simulation models.

The squealing of disk and drum brakes is still a major problem to design engineers. It has been observed by Fieldhouse and others that the introduction of asymmetries into the brake rotor can lead to a reduction of brake noise. However this insight has not yet solved the squeal problem. One reason for this is that it is not a priori obvious which kind of asymmetries of the rotor are preferable and which ones are not. This lack of knowledge most likely originates from the fact that most models explaining disk brake squeal rely on a symmetric rotor. In this paper, models for disk brake squeal are presented which are suitable to study asymmetric brake rotors. The excitation mechanism for squeal is explained by the formulation of a stability problem. It is shown that multiple eigenfrequencies of the rotor make it extremely sensitive to self-excited vibrations, i.e. squeal.

The goal of constructing squeal free brakes is still difficult to achieve for design engineers. There are many measures that are beneficial to avoid or decrease brake squeal, examples are the increase in damping and the introduction of asymmetries in the brake rotor. For an efficient design process these measures have to be quantified. This is difficult due to the high complexity of the system which is caused by the contact conditions and the complicated properties of the pad material which consists of a vast amount of different components. The attempt presented in this paper is to use fundamental models of the excitation mechanism for brake squeal in order to quantify the rate of asymmetry and damping required to get far away from the squeal boundary. The relation can be helpful to generate adequate objective functions for a systematic structural optimization of brake rotors against squeal and can be used as a design guideline.