BMW Brake Caliper Heat Sinks

The concept

The meticolous observation of the braking system's dynamics has given birth to our "Brake Plate Radiator", particularly with the thermal energy transformation during the brake action and with the heat radiation spreading throughout close components. It has been observed that, for various reasons, braking systems have lost during the last years some balance characteristics they had already reached in the past, reasons such as: speed performance upgrades; spending review trend of the manufacturers; the arrival of synthetic materials. Here lies our ambition of inventing a double function device that could, on one hand, reduce the heat radiation coming from the pads towards clamp and oil, while on the other one, generate a cooling for the pad in order to avoid sustained critical temperatures.

Thus, we have made special Hybrid Pads composed of two parts: one produced with special thermal steel, the other consisting in a light-weight alloy with an high thermal-exchange rate.

The project have been carried out after one year of testing and comparisons done right on track before the release of the final version.

The Project

Our heat sinks have been designed using two different metal elements to optimize the thermal insulation of the brake pad by the caliper and the cooling thereof.

The main body of our heat sink is made of a special thermal steel with a high degree of heat conductivity. The material is first laser cut and then CNC machined in our workshops, the slots have two purposes, the first to reduce the contact surface, the second to release the hot air formed inside the brake piston cavity by reducing the hot chamber effect, and the propagation of heat in the piston and oil. The main body of the steel sink is connected to a light alloy heatsink made of a special aluminum with high thermal conductivity, which has the task of assisting the process of heat dissipation.

Our tests have shown a reduction in the temperature of the brake pad to a maximum of 20 degrees, and a substantial improvement in braking, an incredible stability at braking start, an optimum rollback value of the brake pads resulting in a hot free wheel. In addition, the brake pads have shown to have a longer life of 25% due to a less temperature burdensome usage.

The project has been developed for more than a year and during this time we have used different motorcycles, and always getting the same result.

The Development

The development of the project lasted one year, we started with the choice of materials and their production process. Various configurations and different materials processing have been tried, we have used data acquisition tools and special heat cameras for the view of heat propagation by examining different points of the brake caliper and brake pad. We spent over 500 hours on the circuit and 20,000 km of road test.

In total, the product has been tested on six different motorcycles and under different conditions of use.

So we have come to these configurations that in our opinion guarantee the exact compromise between efficiency, weight, cost and ease of installation.