Friction and wear studies on brake-pad materials based on newly developed resin

Phenolics or their modified versions are invariably used as binder materials for friction composites. However, poor shelf life, evolution of harmful volatiles during processing, need of inclusion of curing agent before dispatching to the market, shrinkage in final products along with voids, etc. are the major problems associated with phenolics. In order to overcome these, an alternative resin was synthesized in the present work and tribo-evaluated to explore the possibility of replacing currently used phenolics. A monomer capable of polymerizing through ring opening by thermal activation was synthesized in the laboratory and used as a binder for friction composite. Two types of non-asbestos organic (NAO) friction composites with identical ingredients but differing only in the type of resin (10 wt.%) were developed and characterized for physical, thermal and mechanical properties. The brake pads were then tribo-evaluated for their fade and recovery performance as per ECR 90 regulation on Krauss machine. It was observed that the composite with new resin (N) proved better than the composite with traditional phenolic (P) in all the tribo-performance properties including performance mu, fade mu, disc temperature rise, counterface, friendliness in terms of less scoring, wear, etc. apart front removing the basic problems associated with the traditional resins. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.