Applied Mathematics and Computation 215 (2010) 42724279

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Applied Mathematics and Computation

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/amc

Dynamics of rotating thermoelastic disks with stationary heat source

J. Wauer a,*, B. Schweizer b
a
b

Institut fr Technische Mechanik, Universitt Karlsruhe (TH), Kaiserstrae 12, D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
Fachgebiet Mehrkrpersysteme, Universitt Kassel, Mnchebergstrae 7, D-34109 Kassel, Germany

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Keywords:
Thermoelastic vibrations
Full coupling
Rotating annular disks
Stationary heat source and mechanical
loading
Temperature and stress distribution

a b s t r a c t
Rotating disks are important components of car brakes or sawing units. In both cases, heat
effects to be induced via stationary local contacts between pads and disk or workpiece and
saw blade, respectively, inuence the dynamic behavior and raise interesting problems in
theory and practice. Therefore, the discussion of dynamic thermoelasticity in rotating disks
with stationary heat sources is of basic interest to understand the interaction of temperature and displacement or stress elds in such structural elements. It will be analyzed here
in detail for the case of an elastic disk for which there is a full (but weak) coupling of strain
and temperature within the two applications mentioned. As a relatively general case, the
combined excitation by a mechanical load and a simultaneously acting heat source will
be examined.
2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Since the 1960s, dynamic problems of thermoelasticity attracted more and more attention as the most obvious type of a
multi-eld structural system with domain coupling. Formulating the governing mathematical model equations (see the
books by Nowacki [13] and Parkus [14], for instance), specic one-parametric problems with certain boundary conditions
were considered by Bahar and Hetnarski [2] or Das et al. [4] based on integral transforms within frequency domain, by Wilms and Cohen [21] or Massalas et al. [12] in the more interesting physical time domain but for limited time intervals, and by
Senitzkii [17] or Wauer [19,20] in the time domain without essential restrictions. Recently, Heilig and Wauer [8] extended
these considerations based on former contributions by Barber [3], Dow and Burton [5], Lee and Barber [10], or Ayala et al.
[1], for instance to problems of the present type but in an approximate manner.
To be relatively general, a threedimensional formulation will be the starting point before (due to computation time reasons) a thin disk is concretely considered for which a planar stress state can be assumed without signicant restrictions.
Basically, two possibilities exist to formulate the boundary value problem: either body-xed material coordinates or stationary Euler coordinates. For problems with a nite rigid-body rotation of constant angular speed and an excitation by stationary source terms due to mechanical forces or heat production, a stationary reference frame seems to be adequate since then
time-variant coefcients can be avoided. Here the governing fully coupled boundary value problem is solved by a nite element approach for the 2D case announced. Using the corresponding coordinate transformation, a specic problem formulation in the space-xed circumferential coordinate is derived which allows a very efcient implementation even for the case
of large rigid-body rotation.
Two specic applications will be discussed to be different in the location of loading. While for a disk brake there are stationary pads feeding heat and transferring mechanical forces into the passing circular top surfaces of the disk, for a buzz-saw
the mechanical and the thermal loading is caused by a stationary workpiece mainly acting on the passing circumferential
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wauer@itm.uni-karlsruhe.de (J. Wauer).
0096-3003/$ - see front matter 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.amc.2009.12.053

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4273

surface of the disk. The treatment of the disk model is apparently different from a very recent study by Gao et al. [6] modeling the brake as a three-member structural system (two pads and the disk) with a resting disk and a moving heat source.
2. Physical model
Consider a uniform annular disk of nite constant thickness h (see Fig. 1). It has inner and outer radius Ri and Ro , respectively and stressless, it has temperature #0 used as reference. There is a cylindrical body-xed er ; eu ; ez reference frame and
the disk rotates about a space-xed Z-axis (coinciding with the z-axis normal to the disk surface) with the constant angular
speed x of moderate rate. In that case, centrifugal stiffening effects (discussed for higher speed rates by Wauer and Seemann
[15], for instance) can be neglected and a linear deformation theory is sufcient. In general, there are locally concentrated
stationary heat sources feeding heat into the passing disk surfaces z h=2 or r Ro together with simultaneously acting
stationary mechanical loads. It is assumed that at r Ri the disk is non-movably xed on a rigid shaft and thermally insulated, while with the exception of those surface parts where the prescribed source terms are applied, all other disk surfaces
are traction-free and there is a heat exchange with the environment of temperature #0 . It will be assumed that additional
internal body forces and heat sources do not act.
3. Formulation
Well-known is the general mathematical model

lr2x u k lrx rx  u  3k 2larx # qf x; t qu;tt ;



3k 2la
k r2x  #  #0
trace rx uT rx u qpx; t q c #;t
2

;t

to describe the thermoelastic vibrations ux; t ux; ter v x; teu wx; tez , #x; t in a threedimensional solid at rest
where the symbolic notation of tensors is employed. u; v ; w represent the three displacement components, # the temperature above the reference temperature #0 mentioned and t the stress tensor. f x; t denotes the mechanical eld excitation
and px; t the corresponding heat source. x indicates the governing space coordinates involved, for a circular structure cylindrical coordinates r; u; z (where the corresponding Cartesian axes x; y are also drawn). The property q characterizes the mass
density, k the thermal conductivity, k; l; a and c are appropriate material constants measured in the isothermal state. The
well-known relations k mE=1 m1  2m; l E=21 m allow to use Youngss modulus E and Poissons ratio m instead
of Lams constants k and l. Under the assumptions made below, f  0 and p  0 is fullled. In addition, appropriate boundary conditions have to be added where the stress is introduced through the constitutive equation





k
trace rx uT rx u I l rx uT u  a3k 2l#I:
2

Fig. 1. Rotating disk model.

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If desired also mechanical damping can be included. External damping, for instance, might be adequately described by an
additional term de qu;t on the right-hand side of Eq. (1)1.
It is straightforward to translate the formulation for a solid performing a rigid-body rotation using body-xed coordinates.
If for the annular disk body-xed cylindrical coordinates are used (with the origin of the reference frame in the middle plane
of the disk) and they are retained unchanged as r; u and z (with the corresponding Cartesian axes x; y; z, the eld Eq. (1)
remain unchanged with one exception: The inertia term qu;tt has to be replaced by qu;tt 2x  u;t  x2 u (if external
damping is included also that term has correspondingly to be changed). The relevant mechanical and thermal boundary conditions for the case that heat source and mechanical traction act simultaneously at some space-xed circumferential location
r Ro ; u xt D/0 ; h=2 6 z 6 h=2 are as follows:

ur Ri ; u; h=2 6 z 6 h=2; t 0;

rx #  er r Ri ; u; h=2 6 z 6 h=2; t 0;
tr Ro ; u xt D/0 ; h=2 6 z 6 h=2; t s0 u; z;
rx #  er r Ro ; u xt D/0 ; h=2 6 z 6 h=2; t q0 u; z;
t 0; krx #  en c# 0 en outside normal unit vectorat all remaining surface parts:

3
4
5

The constant values D/0 ; h indicate the nite extension of the region where the source terms act and the thermal boundary
condition in (5) characterizes the heat exchange with the environment where c denotes the governing coefcient of convective heat transfer. For the case that the sources act on the face sides z h=2, the boundary conditions (4) change into

t r Rm  DR; u xt D/0 ; z h=2; t s0 r; u;

rx #  er r Rm  DR; u xt D/0 ; z h=2; t q0 r; u;

while the other ones remain unchanged. The nite extension of the two regions where the sources act are now indicated by
2DR and;D/0 where Rm  DR P Ri ; Rm DR 6 Ro have to be fullled for geometrical reasons.
Now the considerations are specied for a thin disk h  r 2 Ri ; Ro  with the additional slight modication that all source
terms are symmetric with respect to the middle surface of the disk, here assumed to be constant. Then, the assumption is
justied that there is a planar stress state within the disk [11]. Since furthermore it is assumed that the exciting forces
are all in-plane actions, also a pure planar displacement eld

u uer v eu ;

results and x is represented by the polar coordinates r and u only.

The derived equation of motion (1) including the stress-displacement formulation (2) remain basically unchanged when
the material constant k will be replaced by k 2lk=k 2l. In addition, for the types of sources under discussion it has to
be noticed that now the face sides may be projected to the middle surface to be not longer a part of the boundary but contribute to the planar circular eld and only the circumferential faces r Ri and r Ro compose at the middle surface the
corresponding boundary. That means that now instead of the boundary conditions (6) there is an additional eld term

f fr r; uer fu r; ueu ;
p pr; u;

where f r ; fu ; p 0 at r Rm  DR; u xt D/0 ;

while the boundary conditions (5) are only applied at the circumferential surface r Ro where the outside normal unit vector is er .
As mentioned, a representation in the space-xed circumferential coordinate / u xt (measured from the stationary
Cartesian axes X or Y) is useful for the evaluation. Introducing under planar stress state conditions the corresponding
transformation

g ;t r; u; t g ;t r; /; t xg ;/ r; /; t;
g ;tt r; u; t g ;tt r; /; t 2xg ;t/ r; /; t x2 g ;// r; /; t;

the governing boundary value problem (1)(3), (5), (8), formulated within a body-xed reference frame can be reformulated
within a stationary frame er ; e/ ; ez . The exclusive modication due to this transformation concerns the inertia terms which
change into qu;tt 2xu;t/ x2 u;// 2x  u;t xu;/  x2 u and the corresponding term within the equation of heat conduction tracerx uT rx u;t  which then reads tracerx uT rx u;t x tracerx uT rx u;/ .

4. Evaluation and results

Case studies of rotating thermoelastic disks within the two mentioned applications as a brake and a saw will illustrate the
approach presented. As mentioned, all simulations are performed applying the fully coupled thermomechanical theory and
is implemented by a nite element discretization. The advantage of the formulation based on the space-xed circumferential
coordinate / making use of transformation (9) is obvious: it yields linear system equations with time-independent coef-

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cients even for the case of large rigid-body rotation. The discretized equations are solved by numerical time integration
applying backward differences. It should be mentioned that not only for the considered cases but in most practical applications in solid mechanics, it is, however, not necessary to take into account the full coupling. Normally, the coupling effect
within the eld equation of heat conduction called GoughJoule effect is very small and therefore negligible. As discussed
in [16], the corresponding temperature changes for steel within a comparable situation are smaller than one degree.
4.1. Thermoelastic vibrations in a brake model
First, a planar circular rotating disk with a simultaneous heat and circumferential force excitation on a stationary part of
the annular middle surface is considered, see Fig. 2. The disk with radii Ri 0:15 m and Ro 0:30 m and thickness
h 0:015 m is made of cast iron (density q 7000 kg=m3 , Youngs modulus E 1:1 1011 N=m2 , Poissons ratio m 0:25,
thermal conductivity k 40 W=m K, specic heat c 600 J=kg K, thermal expansion coefcient a 9 106 , coefcient
of convective heat transfer c 100 W=m2 K). It rotates with angular speed x 92 1=s, the reference temperature is
#0 293 K. There is a stationary sectorial shape of the surface (corresponding with the pads) represented by an opening angle D/0 40
around a three oclock position (introduced by an appropriate location angle /0 ), Rm 0:24 m and
2DR 0:08 m. In this sector, both a uniform heat source term q0 1:6 109 W=m3 and a circumferential stress term
ft0 106 N=m2 in the opposite direction of the angular speed are applied to the passing disk. The development of the temperature eld within the rotating disk for different time steps starting the process of loading at t 0 is shown in Fig. 3. It is
obvious that the heat input at the stationary pad location will be transferred into the disk which exhibits the pad-shaped
prole of increased temperature in the rotated position for the corresponding time steps t 0:01; 0:04; 0:2 and t 2:0 s
after start at t 0. While a short time interval after t 0, this pad-shaped area of higher temperature on the rotating disk
is visible relatively sharply. For increasing time, this body-xed pattern extends in circumferential direction, becomes
blurred more and more and asymptotically lls the complete annulus. After a certain time, a circumferential temperature
distribution is reached characterized by a mean value of temperature with small periodic uctuations (due to the rotational
speed). Initially, the radial prole of increased temperature is relatively sharply bounded by the feeding radius Rm  DR before it slowly extends into both the inner and the outer radial direction. The temperature increase is accompanied by developing non-uniform elongations and since additionally, a circumferential area force load against the rotational direction is
applied, a non-vanishing displacement and stress distribution within the disk develops. The time history of the von Mises
equivalent stress over the disk surface is represented by Fig. 4 for different times t 0:5; 1:0; 1:5 and t 2:0 s. The stress
is obviously dominated by heat, the mechanical part seems to be secondary. Since for a stationary observer of the rotating
disk, the heat transmission here is rather dominated by the rigid-body rotation than by heat conduction, the asymmetry of
the temperature distribution cannot be visualized. If the thermal conductivity is increased by a factor of 103 , for instance, and
all other parameters are maintained, the resulting temperature distribution is shown in Fig. 5 here for t 0:01 and t 0:04 s.
The asymmetry due to the counterclockwise rotation becomes clearly obvious now.

Fig. 2. Input for brake application.

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Fig. 3. Developing temperature distribution for brake application.

Fig. 4. Developing distribution of von Mises stress for brake application.

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Fig. 5. Developing temperature distribution for brake application with increased heat conduction.

4.2. Thermomechanics of a rotating saw

A planar circular rotating disk is examined next which is excited on a small part of the circumference only, see Fig. 6. The
disk with radii Ri 0:10 m and Ro 0:30 m and thickness h 0:003 m is made of steel (density q 7800 kg=m3 , Youngs
modulus E 2:0 1011 N=m2 , Poissons ratio m 0:33, thermal conductivity k 44 W=m K, specic heat c 470 J=kg K,
thermal expansion coefcient a 12 106 , coefcient of convective heat transfer c 100 W=m2 K). It rotates with angular
speed x 500 1=s, the reference temperature is #0 293 K. There is a stationary sectorial shape of the surface of D/0 10

once again around a three oclock position, where both a uniform heat source term q0 1:25 1010 W=m3 and two uniform
tractions st0 sr0 84 105 N=m2 are acting. One of them represents a type of friction load in the opposite direction of the
angular speed and the other one pushes in radial direction from outside on the disk. The development of the temperature
distribution and that of von Mises stress over the surface of the rotating structural disk member is shown in Fig. 7
(t 0:01; 0:04; 0:2 and t 0:5 s) and Fig. 8 (t 0:01; 0:1; 0:3 and t 1:0 s), respectively where for the time interval shown
the resulting heating is obviously concentrated in a narrow circumferential layer along the subjected surface. Due to the
higher speed as in the case of the disk brake, it takes a shorter time to reach an increased temperature around the complete
circumference while the radial progress of heating to be caused by heat conduction is similar to that of the brake model. In
addition, it can be observed that for small times, t < 0:2 s, the stress eld is dominated by centrifugal forces, i.e., the maximum von Mises stress appears at the inner radius r Ri . For larger times t > 0:2 s, however, when sufcient heat has been
fed into the saw disk, the stress eld becomes dominated by thermal effects leading to high thermal stresses concentrated at
the outer radius r Ro .

Fig. 6. Input for saw application.

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Fig. 7. Developing temperature distribution for saw application.

Fig. 8. Developing distribution of von Mises stress for saw application.

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5. Concluding remarks
Dynamic thermoelastic problems of rotating disks have been studied where stationary sources of heat and forces at small,
bordered areas on different parts of the surface act.
Next steps to continue this work and extend it to structural model systems within practical applications, bending vibrations might be included but also a more realistic contact formulation where break pads or a workpiece would act on the disk.
The presented results might also be an appropriate starting point including wear/material removal.
Acknowledgements
The rst author is grateful to Professor F. C. Moon who invited him for a sabbatical stay in his Department of Mechanical
and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, NY, U.S.A. where some of the work was performed.
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