On the dry and wet sliding performance of potentially new frictional brake pad materials for automotive industry

Abstract In this work, dry and wet continuous sliding performances of newly developed four different non-commercial frictional brake pad materials (NF1, NF2, NF4, and NF5) were evaluated and compared with other two chosen commercial brake pad materials (CMA and CMB) using a small-scale tribo-tester of pad-on-disc type. Results showed that under dry continuous braking, friction coefficients for all non-commercial brake pad materials including the CMB were insensitive to the type of brake pad materials. In addition, all brake pad materials showed a slight increase in the friction coefficients (5–19%) with increasing pressure or speed. Meanwhile, the wear rates were substantially dependent on the type or ingredient of brake pad materials and the pressure. Conversely, under wet sliding condition, the friction coefficients were decreased by a factor of 2. Moreover, no evidence of HD water film could be evidenced as the measured friction coefficient values were in the order of dry friction. Thus, the wet results suggested that the friction behaviour was influenced by factors other than HD film, and the values of friction coefficient were in the range of dry friction, mixed and boundary lubrication friction. Qualitative assessment of the SEM morphologies of brake pad surfaces showed that tribofilms were easily formed in dry braking and hardly formed in wet braking. Besides, all brake pad rubbing surfaces showed contact plateaus “patches” and disintegrations of various sizes and locations depending on the braking condition. Furthermore, the removal of material was associated with either mechanical crushing action performed by entrapped wear debris or due to disintegration of plateaus which were accelerated by spraying the water.