Wear behavior of asbestos-free eco-friendly composites for automobile brake materials

Abstract

The goal of this work is to study the wear behavior of materials that have the potential to be used as brake pad materials under different contact loads and speeds instead of asbestos. The three different brake pad materials studied are flax fiber reinforced phenolic composites (FFRC), basalt fiber reinforced phenolic composites (BFRC), and flax/basalt reinforced hybrid phenolic composites (HFRC). A wear mechanism map was developed by using the fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm method (FCM) to study the wear mechanism of composites. The results showed BFRC to be a better brake pad material than the other fiber reinforced composites studied, because the good thermal characteristics and bonding nature of basalt fiber increased the wear resistance of BFRC considerably.