This site shows how drum brakes operate. Pads are on shoes that pivot about one end and are actuated by a piston at the other end. A fairly accurate simulation of this design would be to put the pads on shoes and use a joint on one end to create the pivot and a force on the other end to push the pad against the drum.Â
Your model has pads connected to ground by a Translational Joint which creates a slightly different motion than pivoting the pads about one end. Your model has no shoe so the pad are defined as either Rigid or Deformable. Which one did you choose? Each one introduces some error relative to modeling the shoe.
Pads conduct heat to the shoe so it is inaccurate to have convection or radiation heat transfer from the inner pad face.
It’s fine to make an initial model that idealizes the mechanism to make a model that is quicker and easier to simulate. Just be aware that a real brakedrum is more complicated than that.
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