Receptance based structural modification in a simple brake-clutch model for squeal noise suppression

Unlike brake squeal, brake-clutch squeal has rarely been studied, even though the cause of squeal noise is identical - dry friction acting at the contact interface. In this paper, a combined theoretical and experimental study is reported on squeal noise of a brake-clutch. On the theoretical side, a receptance-based inverse dynamic method is adopted to identify the mass or stiffness required to split the coupled modes of a brake-clutch model to achieve noise suppression. On the experimental side, the theoretically identified stiffness is implemented on the brake-clutch test rig in the form of a grounded spring and it is thus shown that the actual structural modification has removed the squeal noise. This is the first time that a theoretically derived structural modification is made on a brake-clutch model and shown to be able of completely suppressing actual squeal noise. This study establishes a way of suppressing friction-induced high-frequency noise through structural modification.