One of the most important components in a road vehicle is its braking system. During braking, a large amount of heat can be created and has to be absorbed by brake components in a very short space of time. The absorbed heat must be effectively dissipated to achieve satisfactory performance of the braking system. If this heat is not dissipated effectively the temperatures in the brake and surrounding components become too high may lead to excessive component wear. In high-demand braking applications, vented discs are increasingly being used as these are considered to have high heat-dissipating characteristics. Ventilated discs have consisted of two rubbing surfaces separated by straight or radial vane. The cooling efficiency of ventilated brakes depends on three key characteristics: the mass flow rate through the disc, i.e. the pumping efficiency of the rotor, the average heat transfer coefficient on the surface of the disc, and the surface area of the rotor. Performance of brake disc under various operating conditions is generally obtained through an experimental testing and could be cost prohibitive. In this case the computational fluid Dynamics analysis provides better results. The capability of using computational fluid dynamics is a test to determine its viability for determining its performance parameters. The objective the project is to analyse the heat transfer and flow characteristics of brake disc with straight vanes. Since the vanes provide air pumping as well as heat dissipation, any design change to the vanes will inevitably affect the flow (speed distribution, mass flow, air pressure etc.) and directly and indirectly heat dissipation characteristics. The analysis would be carried out by varying the number vanes around the brake disc. Commercial CFD code CFX would be used to simulate the heat transfer coefficient, velocity distributions, temperature contours, inside the brake disc for various air flow rate. © 2015 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.