Floating Brake Rotors

The objective of the Brake Rotor URCA project is to design, fabricate, and test floating brake rotors to be used as part of the Gaucho Racing Formula SAE vehicle, which will be entered into the 2026 Formula SAE Electric engineering design competition. This project is in service of the teamwide goal of enhancing the performance and placement of UCSB’s FSAE vehicle in 2026, and to produce effective brake rotors that can continue to be iterated upon in future years. In the design phase, we will use computer aided design software (SolidWorks) to construct a floating rotor. With the help of ANSYS simulation software we will simulate the rotor’s thermal and structural capabilities for various material options in order to select appropriate materials for the final design. Then, in the fabrication phase we will manufacture our chosen rotor design (potentially out of a few different materials). Finally, we will test the physical rotors on the vehicle to validate simulation results.