Brake Particle Emission Influenced by Grooved Disc Friction Surfaces with or without a Hard Coating

Many performance sport passenger vehicles use drilled or grooved cast iron brake rotors for a better braking performance or a cosmetic reason. Such brake rotors would unfortunately cause more brake dust emission, appearing with dirty wheel rims. To better understand the effects of such brake rotors on particle emission, a pin-on-disc tribometer with two particle emission measurement devices was used to monitor and collect the emitted airborne particles. The first device was an aerodynamic particle sizer, which is capable of measuring particles ranging from 0.5 to 20 μm. The second device was a condensation particle counter, which measures and collects particles from 4 nm to 3 μm. The testing samples were scaled-down brake discs (100 mm in diameter) against low-metallic brake pads. Two machined surface conditions (plain and grooved) with uncoated or ceramic-coated friction surfaces were selected for the investigation. The results showed that the grooved friction surface led to a higher particle emission than a plain friction surface finish. The ceramic coating can indeed reduce the negative effect of the grooving through reductions of both the brake wear and particle emission.