Abstract
Keywords: Pad abrasion, vehicle durability, inertia simulation
One of the greatest challenges during friction material development in brake industry is the prediction of wear characteristics in vehicle. The wear phenomenon of a friction material is usually established through brake inertia dynamometer tests with specific vehicle conditions at the initial development stage. But the wear figures obtained from dynamometer testing is only an indicative figure and does not provide information on how the friction material would exactly perform in the field. This study illustrates the approach towards correlating the lab tests (inertia dynamometer tests) to the field with the actual service life of the friction material obtained from the field. To simulate the actual field conditions in the inertia dynamometer the cluster of categorized field data were converted into an equivalent simulation script and this script was used to evaluate the rate of friction material abrasion. In this test to account the various losses occurring in dynamometer and change in inertial effect on the brake during a stop in a vehicle etc., a technique called electrical inertia simulation was used which produces exact inertia effect as in the actual vehicle.
A good correlation was seen between wear figures obtained from dynamometer with the data obtained from field vehicle. The correlation obtained has enabled accurate prediction of the service life of friction material at the initial development stage through in-house testing. This study has given the confidence of evaluating the friction material life even without the prototype vehicle testing.