Mattia Alemani

A Study on Emission of Airborne Wear Particles from Car Brake Friction Pairs

The emission of airborne wear particles from friction material / cast iron pairs used in car brakes was investigated, paying special attention to the influence of temperature. Five low-metallic mat ...

Towards the ranking of airborne particle emissions from car brakes – a system approach

Airborne particulate matter emitted from motor vehicle brakes is a contributor to urban air quality. Therefore, a method to rank brake pairs (pads and rotors) with respect to their particle emission factors in a reliable way is needed to develop a low-emission disc brake. A novel inertial disc brake dynamometer designed for brake particle emission studies, a modified SAE J 2707 cycle, an electrical low-pressure cascade impactor and a filter are used to test five different pad materials against cast-iron rotors. By changing only the pad materials, it is shown that the differences between the mass emission factor and the number emission factor of the the worst brake pair and those of the best brake pair decreases by more than four times and 19 times respectively. Furthermore, the results show that the material combination ranked the best in terms of the mass emission factor is ranked the worst in terms of the number emission factor. The results reveal that this combination of a test stand, a test cycle and particle instruments can discriminate between different brake pair materials in a reliable way in the case of the mass emission factors while more research has to be carried out in the case of the number emission factors.

Scaling effects of measuring disc brake airborne particulate matter emissions – A comparison of a pin-on-disc tribometer and an inertia dynamometer bench under dragging conditions

An important contributor to non-exhaust emissions in urban areas is airborne particulate matter originating from brake systems. A well-established way to test such systems in industry is to use inertia dynamometer benches; although they are quite expensive to run. Pin-on-disc tribometers, on the other hand, are relatively cheap to run, but simplify the real system. The literature indicates promising correlations between these two test stands with regard to measured airborne number distribution. Recent studies also show a strong dependency between the airborne number concentration and the disc temperature. However, a direct comparison that also takes into account temperature effects is missing. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to investigate how the transition temperature is affected by the different test scales, under dragging conditions, and the effects on total concentration and size distribution. New and used low-steel pins/pads were tested against cast iron discs/rotors on both the aforementioned test stands, appositely designed for particulate emission studies. A constant normal load and constant rotational velocity were imposed in both test stands. Results show that a transition temperature can always be identified. However, it is influenced by the test scale and the frictional pair status. Nevertheless, emissions are assessed similarly when an equivalent frictional pair status is analysed (e.g. run-in). Further investigations for fully run-in samples on the pin-on-disc should be performed in order to finally assess the possibility of using the tribometers for the initial assessment of different friction materials.