Transient solution of the unperturbed thermoelastic contact problem

Automotive brake and clutch systems experience temperature and contact pressure variation due to frictional heat generation. Due to geometrical complexity and the coupled thermo-mechanical nature of this class of problems, direct finite element simulation is found to be computer-intensive. This paper explores a more time-efficient method that can be used to obtain the transient solution for the unperturbed clutch and brake system based on an eigenfunction expansion and a particular solution. An approximate solution can also be sought based on the same method in which only a subset of the eigenfunctions are used.