Originally Posted by
omgwtfbbq!
You can't rely on Porsche engineering, they can't even put the engine in the right end of the car.
Actually the reason that porsche does it, continues to do it and has no issues is because... (pulled from a porsche forum)
1) The holes are cast in giving a dense boundary layer-type crystalline grain structure around the hole at the microscopic level as opposed to drilling which cuts holes in the existing grain pattern leaving open endgrains, etc, just begging for cracks.
2) The holes are only 1/2 the diameter of the holes in most drilled rotors. This reduces the stress concentration factor due to hole interaction which is a function (not linear) of hole diameters and the distance between them.
3) Since the holes are only 1/2 as big they remove only 1/4 as much surface area and mass from the rotor faces as a larger hole. Explained:
It increases effective pad area compared with larger holes. The larger the pad area the cooler they will run, all else being equal. If the same amount of heat is generated over a larger surface area it will result in a lower temperature for both surfaces.
It increases the mass the rotor has to absorb heat with. If the same amount of heat is put into a rotor with a larger mass, it will result in a lower temperature.
4) The holes are placed along the vanes, actually cutting into them giving the vane a "half moon" cut along its width. It effectively stops cracking on that side of the hole which makes it very difficult to get "hole to hole" cracks that go all the way through the face rotor