Advanced Manufacturing of Ceramic Matrix Composites for Disk Brake Rotors

The strong demand for advanced lightweight structures in the automotive industry has increased activities in the development of new structural materials with low densities and tailored properties. Weight savings in the wheel suspension by the use of lightweight materials provide the additional benefit of an improvement in comfort behavior and driveability. The replacement of iron based materials with ceramics offers the possibility for a significant mass reduction. In the case of high tribological, environmental and thermal loads, ceramics provide the additional advantages of excellent wear, corrosion and temperature resistance with tailored properties for application as brake disk material. Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramics are promising structural materials in various high temperature and tribological applications. But due to the safety sensitiveness of the brake disk, the brittle fracture behavior is not acceptable and a sufficient damage tolerance by means of a fiber reinforcement is an absolute necessity. With regard to the cost targets of the automotive industry the fast and cost effective manufacturing of these ceramic matrix composites (CMC) is of the greatest economical and ecological interest. This paper describes manufacturing technologies for SiC based composites showing great promise for the series production of ceramic brake disks. Different fiber contents and architectures are explored in order to match the properties of these composites with brake disk applications.