Quote:
Originally Posted by singularity
Btw brake discs smoking is very normal, I once braked 'fast' from 300 km/h to a standstill and a friend of mine lit a cigarette (or so he claimed) on my brake discs, either way they were smoking  |
Makes sense, all that kinetic energy is converted to heat through friction. The kinetic energy of the car is proportional to v**2 so those high speeds really require a lot of heat to be absorbed by the brake disks if they are being used to do a complete stop. This is why they need to be so big along with the need for increased surface area in order to produce enough friction between the surfaces to stop from high speeds or slow down quickly from high to low speeds.
Of course this is also why you will wear out your car quickly by tracking it. Same thing happens in the engine. All of the moving components are affected similarly and the energy is mostly dissipated as heat. This is also why you shouldn't really race a stock car. It's not built or designed to handle the kinds of prolonged heat that the constant changing from high to low speed on a track will produce.
I know people do it but I also think they do it with a second car, not their regular car. Right?