Review of brake friction materials for future development

Abstract

Braking system in an automobile is always considered to be important for the designers. The main function of a braking system is to overcome vehicle’s momentum and stop the vehicle by means of friction. Now days, with the increase of innovative technology and by varying design procedures, newly designed automobiles with high speed sprung on to the market, which are throwing prime challenges for the braking system designers to control the speed of the vehicle. After the gradual phasing out of asbestos as a braking material in many parts of the world, due to its widespread complaints as a carcinogenic material, automobile brake friction industry and people are looking for suitable alternatives to replace asbestos material. There is need to develop new friction materials to meet the stringent requirements of customers, such as effective braking performance and less squealing action .Therefore, the main challenge for the designer is to develop a brake friction material which intended to serve its effective braking performance and being eco friendly in nature. Therefore, with in this paper, an overall review of the research carried out in the area of friction materials is presented and the affect of fiber, filler and other ingredients on the braking performance is studied. Various experimental techniques used to study the behavior of squealing action in automobile braking is presented.