Abstract: The heat energy generated during the braking of an aircraft has quite close relations with its safety; therefore, much research in this field has been performed. The article begins with a review of the existing literature on the temperature field of airplane braking, and reaches the conclusion that there is no theoretical mathematic model with the boundary conditions of heat convection and radiation. This article presents a three-dimensional model using the finite element method which takes into account both of the boundary conditions. The process of deriving the model is explained in detail. The numerical simulation results by ANSYS, which are in good agreement with the empirical data, show the importance of the boundary conditions and the validity of the model. This finding is potentially significant in optimizing the design of airplane disk brakes.

Key words: computer simulation, aircraft, braking, finite element method, temperature field