Abstract: The customers' demand for ride comfort has led the automotive industries to look for various ways to reduce and control the brake noise. Intensive research on brake squeal (high frequency noise between 1–5 kHz) has been carried out. A large variety of mathematical-mechanical models has been developed, studying various instability phenomena. The squeal is ascribed mainly to three reasons, alternative stick and slip motion between pad and disk [3,8], static instability due to excessive braking force [7], and dynamic instability arising from the friction force [1,2,4,5,6,9,10,11,12,13]. In this paper, a new model to study the onset of dynamic instability in a floating caliper disk brake is presented. Linearized equations of motion about equilibrium positions are derived assuming a constant braking force. The equations are subsequently discretized using Galerkin's method. The eigenvalue problem is then solved to detect the onset of instability.
