A Contribution for a Better Understanding of the Automotive Friction Material Characteristics Connected to Problems Deriving from Disc-Scoring Phenomena

The aim of this work is to characterize the formation of metal pick-ups onto Automotive brake pads, that can lead to major wear problems for the friction material and for the rotors. The characterization of these metal pick-ups has been obtained by means of microscopy techniques (optical microscope and SEM analysis), by X-ray diffraction and thermal analysis, while it has been tried to evaluate the influence of morphological and compositional parameters (like amount of lubricants and of organic compounds) of the pad on the pick-ups formation by performing “true-scale” simulations following specific procedures.