Design optimization of an opposed piston brake caliper

Successful brake caliper designs must be light and stiff, preventing excessive deformation and extended brake pedal travel. These conflicting requirements are difficult to optimize owing to complex caliper geometry, loading and interaction of individual brake components (pads, disc and caliper). The article studies a fixed, four-pot (piston) caliper, and describes in detail the computer-based topology optimization methodology applied to obtain two optimized designs. At first sight, relatively different designs (named ‘Z’ and ‘W’) were obtained by minor changes to the designable volume and boundary conditions. However, on closer inspection, the same main bridge design features could be recognized. Both designs offered considerable reduction of caliper mass, by 19% and 28%, respectively. Further finite element analyses conducted on one of the optimized designs (Z caliper) showed which individual bridge features and their combinations are the most important in maintaining caliper stiffness.