Integral Molded Brake Pad with Long Fiber Thermosetting Molding Compound for Automotive Brake System

Recently, in view of environment, safety, comfort and convenience for cars, the demand of low fuel consumption is increasing more than before, and weight saving of the automotive parts is pursued. In the tide of weight saving, there is a strong demand of light weightening of the backing plate by replacing steel with plastics.

We have been developing long fiber phenolic molding compound, which has excellent mechanical strength and excellent heat resistance, and have examined in order to apply it to the backing plate for brake pad. By applying this material to backing plate, the weight of brake pad can be reduced in half compared with that of conventional pad made of steel. In the automotive parts, it is said that reduction of part weight under the suspension is about ten times as effective for reducing fuel consumption as that of weight upper the suspension, therefore, phenolic brake pad has a big impact. Also, instead of simple replacement of steel plate with phenolic plate, it may be possible to make integral molded brake pad with lining by using a backing plate made from the same kind of resin. Therefore, there will be no possibility of separation at the interface between backing plate and lining. Although the conventional brake pad needs a pretreatment of backing plate and adhesion with lining, all these prior process may be eliminated by integral molding technology. And phenolic backing plate does not need a coating for antirust. Cracks and blisters were not found and the flatness of molded backing plate held about 0.1 mm after thermal test at 500 deg. C.

We can contribute to development of a new light weighted caliper brake system by integral molded phenolic brake pad.