When the hurtling mass of a car is brought to a halt in a few seconds by the car brakes it is the accomplishment of an immense task
. One may think it is more difficult to make the car to start and accelerate than to stop but if you have any ridden a bicycle without brakes you will know how difficult it is to convert the kinetic energy of the moving bicycle to heat energy.
And that is just for a bicycle, imagine having to stop a car. This amazing job is done by the combination of brake pads and brake rotors. They are pressed against one another and this generates a lot of friction and that brings the car to a halt or slows it down. Now you may be wondering where does all the heat go when there is such a lot of friction created. Which is a very good question. Because ultimately the kinetic energy gets converted to heat energy which must be dissipated otherwise the components of the brake assembly will get damaged. In fact though it is no longer such an issue in older times the material that brake pads were made of also resulted in gases being formed and that had to be moved out as well. If the heat is not removed the performance of the brakes gets affected.
Generating friction requires a lot of surface contact and getting rid of it means there is a need for channels such as a slot or holes that will allow the heat to escape. That is why you get two types of brake rotors. Slotted rotors and drilled rotors. The slotted rotors as the name suggests have slots to carry away the heat. Since they do not have holes this allows for more friction area and therefore better braking performance. These are used usually in performance cars where better braking is required. Since they have more surface area the brake pads get worn out faster. Drilled rotors on the other hand have holes to take away the heat. They are less harsh on the brake pads. You can see the latest brake rotors at www.ilovebodykits.com.