Dipl.-Ing. Steffen Sturm, InfraTec, GERMANY

The increasing demands for quality and lifetime of wearing parts and new materials and designs in braking systems require profound investigations on the relevant assemblies and components. For the investigation of the thermal behaviour during load tests of brake discs InfraTec has developed with permanent new input and further requests since 15 years a thermography based test bench solution Thermal Rotate Check (TRC). Based on the latest technology of cooled highspeed photon detectors the brake disc to be measured is scanned at frame rates up to some kilohertz and speeds up to 400 km/h and can be analysed today in a detail which was never before reached. The data acquisition starts automatically and triggered by the system in interaction with the interface for process signals. For display, archiving and further examination the data are transformed in circular ring or flat projection format and interacts with the master dynamometer stand (test bench).

The real time measurement with TRC allows a contactless and fully synchronized raw data acquisition of thermal state and energy distribution of brake discs during different test scenarios. All thermal active areas, abnormal behaviour and hot spots for both sides of brake disc are automatically displayed and recorded. So the complete thermal braking process and interaction between brake disc and brake pad can be analyzed and documented in a way and detail which could not made with any other measurement system in the past.

The presentation gives an overview of latest hardware and software developments with advantages and samples for this automatic thermographic test solution and interaction with different dynamometers stands.