Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40430-021-03125-y

TECHNICAL PAPER

Grey wolf optimizer‑based design of ventilated brake disc

Kanak Kalita1 · Dinesh Shinde2 · Shankar Chakraborty3

Received: 16 November 2020 / Accepted: 26 July 2021 / Published online: 3 August 2021
© The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering 2021

Abstract
Ventilated brake discs used in automobiles are normally subjected to fluctuating load because of their intermittent operations
which is principally responsible for their fatigue failure. Premature fatigue failures can be avoided by optimally designing
those brake discs. Due to expensive and time-consuming nature of physical experiments, comprehensive design analysis is
carried out in this paper in silico to search out the optimal design of ventilated brake disc. Finite element analysis (FEA)-
based models are first developed to simulate the fatigue life and axial deflection of ventilated brake discs. While considering
five important brake disc design parameters, i.e. inboard plate thickness, outboard plate thickness, vane height, effective
offset and center hole radius, 27 FEA simulations are performed based on the central composite design plan. This dataset is
then employed for developing two polynomial regression-based metamodels. After critical evaluation of those metamodels
with respect to various statistical measures, they are adopted as inexpensive and readily deployable alternatives to the FEA
models. Finally, a recently developed metaheuristic algorithm in the form of grey wolf optimizer is applied to optimize the
ventilated brake disc design which provides approximately 20% improvement over the baseline model and is 21% better than
the multi-criteria decision model-based solutions.

Keywords Ventilated brake disc · Design optimization · FEA · Metamodel · Design parameter

Symbols p Braking pressure

Fpad Braking force ω Rotational speed
M Mass of the vehicle Ti Inboard plate thickness
Vo Initial velocity To Outboard plate thickness
Rrotor Effective rotor radius Hv Vane height
Rtire Radius of the tire Eo Effective offset
tstop Time to stop r Center hole radius
As Surface area of the pad xi Design variable in optimization process
µ Coefficient of friction xil Lower limit for design variable
xiu Upper limit for design variable
Technical Editor: Monica Carvalho. R2 Coefficient of determination or goodness of fit
Adj R2 Adjusted R2
* Shankar Chakraborty Pred R2 Predicted R2
s_chakraborty00@yahoo.co.in Q2F1 Metamodel quality assessment metric proposed
Kanak Kalita by Shi et al. [1]
drkanakkalita@veltech.edu.in Q2F2 Metamodel quality assessment metric proposed
Dinesh Shinde by Hawkins [2]
dsshinde@elecon.com Q2F3 Metamodel quality assessment metric proposed
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vel Tech
by Consonni et al. [3]
Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science
and Technology, Avadi, India
2
Research and Development Department, Elecon Engineering
Company Limited, V.V Nagar, Gujarat, India
3
Production Engineering Department, Jadavpur University,
Kolkata, India

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405 Page 2 of 15 Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405
1 Introduction
Brake discs are the critical components of an automobile,
which make it possible to control the automobile during
high-speed conditions. A typical brake disc is occasion-
ally subjected to high stresses due to sliding of the brake
liner over the surface providing resistance to its rotational
motion. This resistance against the motion induces resid-
ual stresses leading to surface fatigue crack, deformation
and generation of thermal stresses. In order to release the
thermal stresses, a brake disc is usually ventilated at the
surface where the brake liner comes in contact with it.
The venting area, vane dimensions and vane angles are
the important factors to be considered during the design
of a ventilated brake disc [4]. These brake discs are usu-
ally made of cast iron, due to its superior tribological and
mechanical properties [5].
The brake discs are usually designed keeping in mind
both the structural and thermal considerations to obtain
their enhanced mechanical as well as thermal properties.
As the testing for performance evaluation of different
designs for the brake discs is costly and time-consuming,
in silico experimentation using finite element analysis
(FEA) is often preferred. However, physical experiments
were also employed by the past researchers to validate the
derived numerical solutions. Riva et al. [6] applied FEA
to simulate disc brake conditions and its wear, whereas,
Belhocine and Bouchetara [7] adopted computational fluid
dynamics for thermal and thermo-mechanical investiga-
tions of ventilated brake disc for its design improvement.
Belhocine et al. [8] performed structural, contact analysis
and prediction of the performance of a disc brake sys-
tem with the help of FEA. In a recent study, Belhocine
and Afzal [5] carried out a coupled thermo-mechanical
analysis of brake discs to compare three different brake
disc materials. A similar work using transient thermal and
static structural analysis was also reported by Belhocine
and Abdullah [9]. Kim and Zhou [10] numerically exam-
ined the disc brake squeal using a complex Eigenvalue
problem. Pevec et al. [11] proposed a model to predict
the cooling factors of automotive brake disc with the help
of numerical simulation. Shahzamanian et al. [12] inves-
tigated the thermo-elastic contact problem in the brake
discs using FEA method. Zhang et al. [13] applied FEA to
analyze the thermo-mechanical dynamics of the ventilated
brake disc considering temperature field, normal stress and
elasto-mechanical deformations. Integrated thermal and
structural analysis was considered by many of the past
researchers to analyze the characteristics of brake discs
using FEA. Structural analysis mainly includes determi-
nation of stresses, deformations and fatigue life or revers-
ible stresses. A brake disc is usually subjected to several
13
cycles of braking during its high-speed rotation, which
induces structural as well as thermal fatigue. Kim et al.
[14] assessed the fatigue life for brake discs of railway
vehicles using experimental and numerical simulations.
Zhou [15] carried out extensive fatigue fracture analysis
of brake disc bolts under continuous braking condition.
It was observed that high temperature due to continuous
braking would be the prime reason behind bolt fracture of
the brake disc. Yildiz and Duzgun [16] carried out stress
analysis for four different configurations of ventilated
brake disc using FEA. Duzgun [17] investigated thermo-
structural behaviors of different ventilation applications on
brake discs using FEA, whereas, Han et al. [18] analyzed
the behavior of automotive brake discs for thermal fatigue
and thermo-mechanical effect using FEA and experimen-
tal brake dynamometer test. Jian and Shui [19] employed
FEA and experimental analysis to understand the transient
temperature field of a ventilated brake disc. Other math-
ematical techniques were also implemented in the past
to study the performance of brake discs having varying
design parameters. Kakandar et al. [20] applied Taguchi
methodology to study the influences of different design
parameters of a ventilated brake disc on its fatigue life. A
similar study was also carried out by Bhat and Lee [21],
experimentally exhibiting the effects of three ventilation
parameters of the disc brake rotor using Taguchi meth-
odology. Yan et al. [22] utilized experimental studies for
enhancement of cooling performance of a ventilated brake
disc. Yan et al. [23] also proposed solutions for improve-
ment of the heat transfer rate of different types of vanes in
a ventilated brake disc. Afzal and Mujeebu [24] reviewed
the thermo-mechanical and structural performances of the
ventilated brake discs used in automobiles.
Despite the overwhelming accuracy of the numerical
methods, like FEA, the present day researchers are gradu-
ally shifting towards the metamodel-based approaches due
to their ability to be readily deployed in diverse scenarios,
like parametric analysis, design optimization, stochastic
analysis, uncertainty quantification etc. Lü and Yu [25]
adopted polynomial metamodels and FEA to optimize the
ventilated disc brake system for brake squeal reduction. Lü
and Yu [26] also compared the polynomial metamodel and
FEA-based results for reduction brake disc while employ-
ing a hybrid uncertainty model. Song and Lee [27] opti-
mized the structural design of brake discs using FEA and
Kriging metamodels. Hong et al. [28] identified the opti-
mal location of brake pad to minimize the deviation in the
rate of friction heating using polynomial regression meta-
models. The derived optimal solution was able to obtain
approximately 17% and 11% reduction in maximum tem-
perature and thermal stress respectively. Such metamod-
els can easily be integrated with different metaheuristic
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405 Page 3 of 15 405

algorithms [29] and can be suitably augmented to find out

the optimal design solutions for brake discs [26], 27.
From the existent literature, it can be noticed that the
ventilated brake discs with different configurations were
investigated for their improved structural design, thermal
behavior (heat transfer) and airflow using various advanced
mathematical techniques so as to enhance their performance.
But, a suitable systematic approach with evidence which
would optimize the design characteristics of a ventilated
brake disc for its maximum life has not been reported in the
literature till date. Apart from a very recent work [30] on
fatigue life improvement of brake disc, not many works have
been proposed on fatigue life simulation of the brake disc
using FEA. In [30], several multi-criteria decision making
(MCDM) techniques were employed, which in general, can-
not arrive at the global optimal solutions. Thus, as a major
improvement over the existing literature, in this paper, a
polynomial regression-based metamodeling approach is
presented as surrogate to the FEA technique and the appli-
cation of an advanced metaheuristic algorithm in the form of
grey wolf optimizer (GWO) is finally proposed to optimize
a ventilated brake disc design.
2 Problem statement and methodology
Five design parameters, i.e. inboard plate thickness, out-
board plate thickness, vane height, effective offset and
center hole radius, which influence the design of a ventilated
brake disc are considered in this paper based on the previ-
ous research works [20, 25, 26]. The values of those design
parameters are varied at five different levels, as provided in
Table 1 and are also graphically explained in Fig. 1. The
brake dimensions are considered from [8]. Structural integ-
rity as well as performance of a ventilated brake disc mainly
depends on these design parameters. Considering these
design parameters and their corresponding levels, 27 sample
points (without repetitions) of the experimental dataset are
developed using the central composite design (CCD) plan,
as shown in Table 2. In CCD, the real values of the design
parameters are usually coded as ± α, ± 1 and 0. For a CCD
plan with five design variables, the value of α is set as 2.
Coding is linear transformation of the actual measurement
Fig. 1  A ventilated brake disc with the corresponding design param-
eters
scales of various design parameters into a common non-
dimensional scale. This is helpful during regression analysis
as it removes biases introduced due to various design param-
eters having different scales as well as units of measurement.
In this paper, the lowest levels of all the design parameters
are coded as −2, while the highest levels are coded as + 2.
All the intermediate levels are coded according to the linear
scale. Thus, as noticed from Table 1, levels of all the design
parameters (both real and coded) are equally spaced.
It should be noted that in [30], a two-level full fac-
torial design (FFD) plan was deployed for experimental
design. In this paper, CCD is preferred over FFD primarily
because of the following three reasons:
• In FFD, the number of sample points would increase
considerably with increase in the number of levels for
the considered design variables. For example, for a five-
level, five-design variable FFD plan, the sample points
required would be 3125 as compared to 27 in CCD. Thus,
for the current problem, CCD is more than 99% economi-
cal (in terms of sample points) as compared to FFD plan.
• A FFD is more suitable for finding out the correla-
tion among various design parameters and responses,
whereas, CCD is more appropriate for building meta-
models with curvature.

Table 1  Design parameters of a Design parameter Symbol Level

ventilated brake disc and their
levels −2 −1 0 1 2

Inboard plate thickness (mm) Ti 3 5 7 9 11

Outboard plate thickness (mm) To 3 5 7 9 11
Vane height (mm) Hv 4 5 6 7 8
Effective offset (mm) Eo 16 22 28 34 40
Center hole radius (mm) r 20 22.5 25 27.5 30

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Table 2  CCD design plan and Sl. No Design parameter FEA result
FEA simulation results
Coded value Actual value Fatigue life (cycles) Axial deflection (mm)
Ti To Hv Eo r Ti To Hv Eo r

1 0 2 0 0 0 7 11 6 28 25 708,090 0.0083944
2 0 0 0 0 2 7 7 6 28 25 685,450 0.0079908
3 −1 1 1 1 −1 5 9 7 22 22.5 706,310 0.011284
4 0 0 0 0 0 7 7 6 28 25 683,960 0.0080673
5 1 1 1 1 1 9 9 7 34 27.5 853,910 0.0063558
6 1 1 −1 1 −1 9 9 5 34 22.5 762,120 0.0062237
7 0 0 0 0 −2 7 7 6 28 16 621,510 0.0081654
8 −1 −1 1 1 1 5 5 7 34 27.5 607,820 0.011138
9 1 −1 1 1 −1 9 5 7 34 22.5 696,100 0.006346
10 −1 −1 −1 −1 1 5 5 5 22 27.5 491,910 0.01175
11 1 1 1 −1 −1 9 9 7 22 22.5 779,220 0.0073682
12 0 −2 0 0 0 7 3 6 28 25 351,810 0.0085597
13 0 0 2 0 0 7 7 8 28 25 763,460 0.0082521
14 2 0 0 0 0 11 7 6 28 25 712,310 0.0056196
15 −2 0 0 0 0 3 7 6 28 25 351,080 0.021902
16 1 −1 −1 −1 −1 9 5 5 22 22.5 620,650 0.0070345
17 −1 1 −1 −1 −1 5 9 5 22 22.5 546,400 0.012242
18 1 −1 −1 1 1 9 5 5 34 27.5 488,460 0.0061756
19 −1 1 −1 1 1 5 9 5 34 27.5 601,280 0.011051
20 1 1 −1 −1 1 9 9 5 22 27.5 776,830 0.0071958
21 −1 −1 1 −1 −1 5 5 7 22 22.5 563,040 0.012125
22 1 −1 1 −1 1 9 5 7 22 27.5 715,420 0.0069652
23 0 0 0 2 0 7 7 6 40 25 691,200 0.007541
24 −1 1 1 −1 1 5 9 7 22 27.5 641,660 0.012437
25 0 0 −2 0 0 7 7 4 28 25 793,720 0.0078883
26 −1 −1 −1 1 −1 5 5 5 34 22.5 484,460 0.011115
27 0 0 0 −2 0 7 7 6 16 25 601,130 0.009336

• A CCD is an augmented factorial design consisting of
three types of sample points, i.e. factorial points, axial
points and center points. If the system to be modeled
lacks curvature, i.e. only linear terms are sufficient,
factorial points in the CCD are sufficient to provide a
valid design. However, presence or absence of curvature
is rarely known with certainty at the beginning of the
modeling phase. It is advantageous in those situations
to be run in two blocks, i.e. the first block (consisting of
factorial points and at least three center points) can be
analyzed before running the second block to determine
the presence or absence of curvature. If the curvature
is significant, the second block containing axial points
and at least two additional center points can be added.
The multiple reruns of the center point are necessary to
account for the random experimental errors. However, in
context of this FEA-based study, it should be noted that
[31]“…computer simulation (viz. FE) results rather than
physical experiments, which would repeatedly return the
same measured value for a given data point, thus render-
ing multiple coinciding points superfluous.”
In this paper, a half two-level factorial design (i.e. 16 fac-
torial sample points) and one center point are adopted in the
first block, whereas, the second block consists of 10 axial
sample points (i.e. two for each design variable). Thus, as
compared to FFD in [30], the present CCD plan is 50% and
16% economical with respect to factorial design and total
sample set respectively.
During the numerical analysis, a solid model of the venti-
lated brake disc with brake liner is reproduced using SOLID-
WORKS and is later imported in IGES format into ANSYS
v16.0 for subsequent FEA simulation. Based on the CCD
experimental plan in Table 2, the brake disc is modeled for
each run with the corresponding set of design parameters,
and FEA simulation is performed on each model separately
for determination of fatigue life and axial deflection. The
materials of the brake disc and brake pad are considered to

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Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405 Page 5 of 15 405

be grey cast iron FG 15 with high carbon content and semi- Table 3  Assumed vehicle data
metallic steel fibers respectively. These materials are con- Parameter Value
sidered to be homogeneous with isotropic elastic behavior
and unaffected due to changes in temperature. The Young’s Mass of vehicle, M (kg) 1750
modulus, Poisson’s ratio and density of the brake disc Initial velocity,Vo (m/s) 40
material are considered to be 138 GPa, 0.3 and 7250 kg/m3 Time to stop, tstop (sec) 10
respectively, whereas, for brake pad material, those values Effective rotor radius, Rrotor (mm) 150
are 1 GPa, 0.25 and 1400 kg/m3 respectively. The coefficient Radius of tire, Rtire (mm) 380
of friction of the disc and the pad is considered as 0.2 [8]. Coefficient of friction of discs/pads, μ 0.2
The static structural module of ANSYS v16.0 is employed Surface area of pad, As ­(mm2) 6480.5
here for this purpose. The simulation is carried out for a
total braking time of 10 s with the following time steps as
increment of initial time = 0.25 s, to be responsible for 60% of the total brake force [33]. The
increment of minimal initial time = 0.125 and increment related design calculations [8] are performed as given below,
of maximal initial time = 0.5 s. assuming the vehicle data provided in Table 3.
During FEA for fatigue life, the S–N curve of the brake Braking force on the brake pad:
disc material is provided as the input to ANSYS in accord- ( )
ance with the literature [32]. The corresponding loading and (30%) 21 M.Vo2
boundary conditions are also applied to replicate the opera- Fpad = ( ( ( ) )) = 2660 N (1)
R V
tion of the brake disc, as shown in Fig. 2. Except rotational 2. Rrotor Vo .tstop − 21 t o tstop
2
tire stop
direction, all the other directions of the disc are constrained
due to rigid bolt holes. On the other hand, brake pads can The parameters used in Eq. (1) are detailed out in Table 3.
only move up or down, i.e. normal to the surface of the disc. In this equation, 30% of the kinetic energy is assumed to be
All other degrees of freedom for the brake pads are thus absorbed [8].
constrained. Further, two front rotors (brakes) are assumed Braking pressure on the brake pad:

Fig. 2  A ventilated brake disc

model with the loadings and
boundary conditions

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Fpad α, β and δ. The location of the prey (optimal solution) is

p = = 2.052 MPa ≈ 2 MPa (2) searched by those α, β and δ wolves. The ω wolves update
As .𝜇
their positions following the best agent while employing the
Rotational speed of the disc: expressions as given below:
Vo ��⃗𝛼 = ||C
��⃗ .X�⃗ − X�⃗||
𝜔 = = 105.26 rad/sec (3) D
| 1 𝛼 | (8)
Rtire

Based on the fatigue life and axial deflection data, as ��⃗𝛽 = ||C
��⃗ .X�⃗ − X�⃗||
D
| 2 𝛽 (9)
reported in Table 2, two second-order polynomial metamod- |
els are subsequently developed. Due to paucity of space, the
mathematical details of the regression metamodels are not ��⃗𝛿 = ||C
D ��⃗ .X�⃗ − X�⃗|| (10)
included in this paper and can be found in the literature [31, | 3 𝛿 |
34]. Furthermore, in order to determine the optimal combi-
nation of the design variables for the considered ventilated X�⃗1 = X�⃗𝛼 − A
�⃗1 (D
��⃗𝛼 ) (11)
brake disc, a recently developed metaheuristic algorithm in
the form of GWO is also employed.
X�⃗2 = X�⃗𝛽 − A
�⃗2 (D
��⃗𝛽 ) (12)

2.1 Grey wolf optimizer

X�⃗3 = X�⃗𝛿 − A
�⃗3 (D
��⃗𝛿 ) (13)
The GWO is a relatively new metaheuristic algorithm devel-
oped by Mirjalili et al. [35]. It is inspired from the leader- X�⃗1 + X�⃗2 + X�⃗3
ship hierarchy (i.e. alpha, beta, delta and omega wolves) and �⃗ + 1) =
X(t (14)
3
hunting behavior of grey wolves. Its implementation is based
on mimicking three key steps of grey wolves, i.e. hunting Thus, the GWO works by initiating a random set of candi-
and searching for prey, encircling prey and attacking prey date solutions (a population of grey wolves). As the iteration
[36], 37. In GWO, the fittest solution (wolf) is considered as progresses, the alpha, beta and delta wolves estimate the
alpha (α), the second-best solution as beta (β) and the third- probable position of the prey (optimal solution). Based on
best solution as delta (δ). The remaining solutions (wolves) the above equations, each wolf updates its distance from the
are considered as omega (ω), which follow the other three prey. This iterative process continues until the termination
wolves. In nature, the grey wolves hunt by encircling the criterion is met.
prey, which is modeled in GWO as:

��⃗ = ||C.
D �⃗ ||
��⃗ X�⃗p (t) − X(t) (4)
| | 3 Results and discussions

�⃗ + 1) = X�⃗p (t) − A.
X(t �⃗ D
��⃗ (5) 3.1 Finite element modeling

where t indicates the current iteration, and X�⃗p (t) and X(t)
�⃗
respectively represent the position vectors of the prey and
�⃗ and C
the grey wolf at iteration t. In Eqs. (4) and (5), A ��⃗ are
the coefficient vectors which can be calculated as below:
�⃗ = 2�a⃗.⃗r1 − a�⃗
A (6)
��⃗ = 2.⃗r2
C (7)
where the components of a�⃗ are linearly decreased from 2 to
0 over the course of iteration, and ⃗r1 and ⃗r2 are the random
vectors [0,1].
Any grey wolf at position (X, Y) can update its position in
the search space based on the position of the prey (X*, Y*).
Now, in order to mimic the hunting behavior of the grey
wolves, the three best solutions are assigned the roles of
In this paper, two responses, i.e. fatigue life and axial deflec-
tion are considered in order to evaluate the performance of
the ventilated brake disc design. Figure 3a and c respec-
tively show the simulation results of the experimental run
numbers 17 and 5 according to the CCD plan in ANSYS,
with the corresponding minimum and maximum values of
fatigue life. It is the number of loading cycles that a brake
disc undergoes before the first sign of fatigue failure. Since
this failure mode needs to be always avoided, the minimum
value of fatigue life for each experimental run is considered
in this paper for further analysis. On the other hand, Fig. 3b
and d represent the corresponding directional deformation
signifying axial deflection of the ventilated brake disc for
the same simulation runs. Its value is observed to be the
maximum at the top circular ring of the brake disc, which is
the most critical area for safety against failure due to axial

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Fig. 3  FEA-based simulated results for experiment run number 17 for a fatigue life and b axial deformation, and experiment run number 5 for c
fatigue life and d axial deformation

deformation. The outermost part of the circular ring of the
brake disc experiences maximum deformation as it is fur-
thest point from the constraints due to bolts in the hub.
Since FEA models are sensitive to mesh size, a grid
independency test is carried out for the present FEA
model before deploying it for studying the behavior of the
ventilated brake disc. It can be observed from Fig. 4 that
as the number of nodes in the FEA model increases, the
fatigue life of the brake disc shows an almost monotonic
increase until about 45,000 nodes. It signifies that the FEA
results are dependent on the mesh size. However, as the
mesh size is further increased to about 55,000 nodes, no
improvement is noticed in the fatigue life. Thus, it can be
propounded that beyond 45,000 nodes, the FEA model
converges and the present FEA model with high mesh dis-
cretization, as shown in Fig. 3, can be deployed for this
ventilated brake disc fatigue life optimization problem.

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405 Page 8 of 15
Fig. 4  Mesh sensitivity analysis of FEA model for fatigue life
Fig. 5  Validation of the FEA model
Again, in order to validate the appropriateness of the pre-
sent FEA model, the maximum, minimum and average Von
Mises stresses (MPa) are computed and compared with the
results of Belhocine et al. [8] in Fig. 5. The minimum Von
Mises stress shows an excellent correlation with that derived
by Belhocine et al. [8], whereas, there is approximately 15%
variation in the maximum stress between the considered mod-
els. However, it is worth noting here that the maximum stress
concentrations in both the models occur in the bolt holes.
3.2 Accuracy of the metamodels
The following two polynomial regression metamodels for
fatigue life and axial deformation are developed using the
FEM-based data (in coded form) of Table 2.
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Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405
Fatigue life = 678143 + 73845.42 × Ti + 71351.25
× To + 30452.08 × Hv + 10227.92 × Eo
+ 6119.58 × r + 18939.38 × Ti × To
+ 113.13 × Ti × Hv − 15524.38 × Ti × Eo
− 4120.63 × Ti × r − 12651.88 × To × Hv
(15)
+ 18355.63 × To × Eo + 8766.88 × To × r
+ 16516.88 × Hv × Eo + 8080.63 × Hv × r
− 13376.88 × Eo × r − 32249.10 × Ti2
− 32685.34 × To2 + 29474.66
× Hv2 − 3631.6 × Eo2 − 1802.85 × r2
Axial deflection = 0.008161 − 0.003002 × Ti + 0.000049
× To + 0.000082 × Hv − 0.000459 × Eo
0.000042 × r − 0.000016 × Ti × To − 0.000026 × Ti
× Hv − 0.000031 × Ti × Eo − 0.000069 × Ti × r +
0.000015 × To × Hv − 0.000077 × To × Eo
+ 0.000032 × To × r − 0.000007 × Hv × Eo + 0.000013
× Hv × r + 0.000011 × Eo × r + 0.001330 × Ti2
+ 0.000009 × To2 − 0.000093
× Hv2 − 0.0000006 × Eo2 − 0.000091 × r2
(16)
The accuracy of the metamodels can be assessed using
various metrics, like R2, Adj R2 and Pred R2, and their val-
ues are reported in Table 4. Higher values of all these indi-
ces ensure the appropriateness of the developed metamod-
els in representing the higher order relationships between
the considered design parameters and responses of the
ventilated brake disc. Furthermore, the predicted response
values using the metamodels are contrasted against those
obtained from FEA in Fig. 6. It can be unveiled that for
both the brake performance measures, the metamodel-
based predictions are in excellent congruence with the
FEA-based simulation results.
To further assess the reliability of the metamodels,
the FEA-based FFD sampled data, presented in [30], are
employed as an independent test dataset. Figure 7 shows
that the present estimations of fatigue life and deflection
are in good congruence with those reported in [30]. Based
Table 4  Goodness of fit metricsfor the metamodels
Metric Fatigue life (cycles) Axial
deflection
(mm)
R2 92.61% 94.86%
Adj R2 79.17% 85.52%
PredR2 94.17% 76.27%
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405 Page 9 of 15 405

Fig. 6  Comparison between metamodel and FEA-based results for a fatigue life and b axial deflection

Fig. 7  Comparison between metamodel and FEA-based results for testing data on a fatigue life and b axial deflection

Table 5  Accuracy of the metamodels based on test data on the recommendations of Kalita et al. [31], where it has
Metric Fatigue life (cycles) Axial been emphasized that the metamodel performance should
deflection always be validated on independent test datasets, addi-
(mm) tional metamodel quality metrics, like Q2F1 , Q2F2 and Q2F3 are
reported in Table 5. Based on Q2F3 , which is the most reli-
R2 85.96% 97.64%
able metric among the considered ones, the metamodels
Q2F1 84.99% 96.56%
are approximately 96% and 99% accurate for fatigue life
Q2F2 84.99% 96.55%
and deflection respectively on the independent test data.
Q2F3 96.34% 99.25%
Thus, it can be revealed that even after using 84% of a full

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405 Page 10 of 15
Fig. 8  Parallel plot of the brake disc design parameters (in coded
form) and the performance measures (in uncoded form)
two-factorial design in the current metamodel, its efficacy
is almost comparable with that of FFD. This proves the
appropriateness and accuracy of the developed metamod-
els which can be successfully employed as the suitable
substitutes for the relatively expensive FEA-based models.
3.3 Parametric study of the brake design
parameters
With the help of these metamodels, the influences of the con-
sidered ventilated brake design parameters on fatigue life and
axial deformation are now studied. A parallel plot showing
the effects of these design parameters on fatigue life and axial
deformation is provided in Fig. 8. In order to keep the parallel
Fig. 9  a Main effect plots of the design parameters on fatigue life b Pareto analysis of the design parameters
13
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405
plot manageable and comprehensive, data on the FFD plan
of five design parameters with five level variations in each
(i.e. 3125 cases) are analyzed here. It is quite evident from
this plot that the brake design problem is quite complex and
arbitrary or brute force approach towards selection of the opti-
mal design parameters of the ventilated brake disc would not
be at all productive. Furthermore, it should be noted that the
parallel plot is a much simplified representation of the possible
complexities of the brake design problem as it is constructed
based on the assumption that the design variables are discrete
(i.e. unit increment in the coded design space). On the other
hand, in real-life scenarios, all the design parameters under
consideration may be treated as continuous variables (or as
discrete variables with much finer resolution). It can also be
revealed from Fig. 8 that the range of fatigue life of the brake
disc is quite large, whereas, the maximum axial deformation
has a comparatively small value (< 0.05 mm). Thus, it can
be propounded that instead of adopting a relatively expensive
Pareto optimization approach, this brake disc design problem
can be formulated as a constrained single-objective optimiza-
tion problem (maximization of fatigue life while keeping axial
deformation as the constraint).
The main effects (based on the data on five design param-
eters with five levels in each) of the design parameters on
fatigue life are exhibited in Fig. 9a. It can be revealed that
fatigue life is most sensitive to both the inboard and outboard
plate thicknesses (having sharp steepness), and is least sensi-
tive to effective offset and center hole radius (with indistinct
steepness). This is also visible from the corresponding Pareto
analysis plot in Fig. 9b. It can thus be concluded that inboard
and outboard plate thicknesses account for approximately 80%
of the explainability of the fatigue life polynomial regression
metamodel, presented in Eq. (15). The interaction effects of
the five design parameters on fatigue life are also shown in
Fig. 10. Figure 10 reveals that the brake disc design problem
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405 Page 11 of 15 405

Fig. 10  Interaction effects of the design parameters on fatigue life

is extremely complex and conflicting settings of the consid-

ered design parameters may often be required to achieve the
maximum fatigue life of the brake disc. It further reiterates
the necessity of adoption of a global optimization algorithm
in solving this brake disc design problem.

3.4 Selection of the optimal GWO parameters

Thus, the constrained optimization problem, as adopted in this

paper, can be stated as:
[ ]
FindX = xi , i = 1, 2, … , 5 (17)

such that xil ≤ xi ≤ xiu.

which maximizes fatigue life.
subject to axial deformation ≤ 0.05 mm.
where xi is the ith design variable under consideration,
and xii and xiu are the lower and upper bounds of the ith Fig. 11  Effect of number of search agents of GWO on its optimiza-
design variable respectively, as stated in Table 1. A very tion performance
small axial deformation of 0.05 mm is considered as the
constraint.
[35]. Thus, in this paper, an initial pilot test is first conducted
It is a well-known fact that the settings of different tun-
in order to determine the optimal number of search agents
ing parameters in any of the metaheuristic algorithms have
in GWO. The number of search agents is varied between 50
significant effects on its overall optimization performance.
and 1000 with an increment of 50. However, for having a
In GWO, the number of search agents has been observed
fair comparison, the number of iterations is adjusted each
to have a prominent role in achieving the optimization goal
time so that the total number of function evaluations would

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405 Page 12 of 15 Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405
be approximately 100,000. Furthermore, due to stochas-
tic behavior of GWO algorithm, it is important that GWO
should be independently rerun multiple number of times to
assess its optimization performance. Figure 11 shows the
box plots for 30 independent trials of GWO at different num-
bers of search agents. It can be noticed from Fig. 11 that
variation in the optimal performance of GWO for the 30
independent reruns is quite large when a smaller number of
search agents is considered. An overall increase in the mean
optimal performance of the independent reruns of GWO is
observed when the number of search agents increases, indi-
cating that a higher number of search agents would perhaps
be better in solving this constrained optimization problem.
From Fig. 11, it can be unveiled that the optimization per-
formance of GWO with 500, 800 and 850 numbers of search
agents is the most satisfactory. However, among these three
alternatives, 850 number of search agents is selected for fur-
ther analysis in this paper because a) the mean predictions
in the other two alternatives are smaller than their corre-
sponding median values indicating that they may have some
outliers in the lower side (sub-optimal solutions), and b) the
smaller range and symmetry of the box plot for the 850 num-
ber of search agents are indicative of a normal distribution of
the 30 derived solutions. An iteration limit of 118 is chosen
as the termination criterion for GWO to restrain the total
function evaluations to approximately 100,000. The value
of this iteration limit is determined while dividing the total
number of function evaluations by the number of search
agents.
3.5 Design optimization using GWO
The convergence diagram of a typical GWO trial with 850
search agents over 118 iterations is exhibited in Fig. 12.
The best solution from the CCD-based experimental run,
Fig. 12  Typical convergence diagram of a GWO trial
13
Fig. 13  Variations in the evaluated iteration-wise best fitness for
GWO for 30 independent trials
i.e. experiment number 5 in Table 2, having the maximum
fatigue life of 853,910 cycles, is considered here as the base-
line value. It can be noticed from Fig. 12 that GWO achieves
an 11% improvement in fatigue life over the baseline value
at iteration 1 itself, which is further improved to 20% at
iteration number 107. On an average, it takes approximately
45 s to solve each independent GWO trial in MATLAB v14.
Thus, it becomes obvious that GWO not only has a very
fast convergence, but also it is computationally efficient.
These advantageous features of GWO are further studied
in detail in Fig. 13, where the variation of the best fitness
achieved in each iteration of GWO is plotted for each of
the 30 independent trials. It can be revealed that in all the
30 trials, the spreads of the box plots are quite small, with
no outliers towards the upper side indicating that the con-
vergence to the optimal solution is excellent. On the lower
ends of the box plots, smaller numbers of outliers are noticed
which signify that GWO algorithm is quickly able to navi-
gate itself towards the optimal solution zone from the best
fitness solutions obtained in perhaps the first few iterations.
To justify the claim of fast convergence of GWO, the total
function evaluations (approximately 100,000, i.e. 850 search
agents × 118 iterations) for three independent trials of GWO
are analyzed in Fig. 14. From Fig. 14, some interesting fea-
tures can be noticed, i.e. (a) means and medians for all the
function evaluations are almost the same, (b) 50% of the
function evaluation data (i.e. those below median) account
for roughly 80% of the range of the entire box plot, and c)
dense data cluster is observed above Q2, where 50% of the
data occupy roughly only 20% of the range. These features
of the box plots indicate that although GWO initially starts
with a low fitness value (probably due to random allotments
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405 Page 13 of 15 405

outboard plate thickness, vane height, effective offset and

center hole radius respectively. Thus, it can be propounded
that this optimization problem is most sensitive to center
hole radius and least to vane height. Further, in Table 7,
the current optimal solutions are compared with various
MCDM-based optimal solutions as reported by Maheshwari
et al. [30]. It is observed that the current design is approxi-
mately 21% better than the previous results [30] computed
using EDAS (Evaluation based on Distance from Average
Solution), ARAS (Additive Ratio Assessment) and TOPSIS
(Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal
Solution). Similarly, when compared to COPRAS (Complex
Proportional Assessment) solution, the current GWO-based
optimal design is found to be approximately 33% better for
fatigue life and 16% better for axial deflection.

Fig. 14  Variations in total evaluated function for three typical inde-

pendent GWO trials
4 Conclusions

In this paper, the application of GWO for the optimal design

of the initial search agents), it is quickly able to guide itself of a ventilated brake disc is proposed while treating inboard
towards the optimal zone without wasting much function plate thickness, outboard plate thickness, vane height,
evaluations.
The optimal solution derived using GWO is presented in
Table 6. The variations in the values of the optimal design
variables and fatigue life of the ventilated brake disc for
the 30 independent trials of GWO are analyzed in Fig. 15.
The minimum and maximum values reported in Fig. 15 cor-
respond to the normalized values of 0 and 1 respectively.
The red filled data points indicate the optimal values of the
design parameters of the ventilated brake disc for achiev-
ing its maximum fatigue life of 1,024,160 cycles. It can be
noticed from Fig. 15 that there is approximately only 0.5%
variation between the best (1,024,160 cycles) and the worst
(1,018,887 cycles) response solutions for the 30 GWO tri-
als, with more data point accumulation towards the higher
side of the objective function value. This is indicative of the
high reliability of GWO in obtaining the optimal solution for
the considered problem. Furthermore, from Fig. 15, influ-
ences of the design variables on the considered response can
also be visualized which may lead to the sensitivity analysis
of the said optimization problem. The variations between
the highest and lowest optimized values are 3.37%, 5.84%, Fig. 15  Optimal values of the design variables and response for the
0.01%, 0.06% and 20.28% for inboard plate thickness, 30 independent trials

Table 6  Optimal design Source Ti To Hv Eo r Fatigue life (cycles) Axial

variables and responses for 30 deflection
independent trials of GWO (mm)

Best 9.1420 10.6617 7.9999 39.9925 29.6181 1,024,160 0.00473

Mean 9.1975 10.5484 7.9997 39.9884 28.5304 1,023,297 0.00483
SD 0.0776 0.1539 0.0003 0.0076 1.3890 1444 0.00011

13
405 Page 14 of 15
Table 7  Comparison of the optimal design with the past results
Optimization method Ti To Hv Eo
Present study (GWO) 9.1420 10.6617 7.9999 39.9925
EDAS/TOPSIS/ ARAS [30] 9 9 7 34
COPRAS [30] 9 9 5 34
effective offset and center hole radius as the predominant
design variables. Due to the presence of many design param-
eters and expensive experimentation procedure, an exhaus-
tive experimental study may not be sometimes possible. In
silico experiments based on numerical approaches, like FEA
usually provide highly accurate solutions, but their applica-
tions may be time-consuming for an exhaustive analysis.
To address these challenges, a data-driven approach is pre-
sented in this paper. Polynomial regression metamodels are
developed from FEA simulation data on fatigue life and
axial deformation. When compared with an independent
FFD dataset, the current metamodels are noticed to have
less than 4% and 1% error for fatigue life and axial defor-
mation respectively. Subsequently, these metamodels are
applied for a parametric study to reveal the complex nature
of the brake disc design problem and insignificant role of
axial deformation as a brake disc performance measure.
Thus, optimization of the design variables is carried out to
maximize fatigue life of the ventilated brake disc while con-
straining the axial deformation at 0.05 mm based on GWO
technique. This algorithm exhibits quick convergence and
reliable solutions on multiple independent trials. At the
optimal values of the considered design variables, there is
almost 20% improvement in the baseline fatigue life of the
ventilated brake disc. Further, as compared to MCDM-based
optimal solutions, the current solution is found to be about
21% better. Thus, it can be effectively employed as a reliable
tool to optimize such complex mechanical systems. Addi-
tional performance measures of the brake disc, like thermo-
mechanical behavior, residual stress etc. may also be taken
into consideration for more reliable and inexpensive design
of the ventilated brake discs.
Declarations
Conflict of interest Hereby we declare that we do not have any conflict
of interest for the manuscript.
13
Journal of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (2021) 43:405
r Fatigue life (cycles) % improve- Axial % improve-
ment by deflection ment by
GWO (mm) GWO
29.6181 1,024,160 – 0.00473 –
22.5 843,404 21% 0.00590 20%
27.5 769,322 33% 0.00563 16%
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