The binder in friction materials (FMs) plays a very crucial role which binds all the ingredients firmly so that they can function the way they were supposed to do. The type and amount of binder, both are very critical for manipulating the desired performance properties, which mainly include friction and its sensitivity towards operating parameters, wear resistance, counter-face friendliness, noise, vibration etc. Although a lot is reported on the influence of types of resins on tribo-performance of FMs, hardly any paper pertains to paint this on a bigger canvas with more detailed understanding of the amount of resin in FMs on the performance properties.
The present study addresses these aspects by developing brake-pads with identical composition but varying in amount (wt. %) of straight phenolic resins (6, 8, 10 and 12) by compensating the difference with barite, a space filler. The ingredients did not contain asbestos, Copper, Zinc, etc. and hence were environment friendly. Tribological performance of the composites was evaluated on a full-scale inertia brake dynamometer following JASO C406 test schedule. With increase in the resin contents, most of the performance properties showed improvement. The performance ranking of pads was done using ‘Multiple Objective Optimizations based on Ratio Analysis (MOORA)’ method based on several conflicting criterions. Worn surface topography of pads was investigated using SEM technique to understand the underlying wear mechanisms.