Tribological Performance of Brake Friction Composites with Sb ₂ O ₃ Pre-blended with Metal Sulfide

The brake friction composite in brake pad plays a crucial role in converting the energy by absorbing the frictional shear load against the rotor. During the braking action, the brake friction composite maintains a stable coefficient of friction in all adverse conditions. The metal sulfide plays a significant role in stabilizing the coefficient of friction as they oxidized at elevated temperature at the interface. The research work evaluates the tribological performance of the brake pads developed with the mixture of pre-blended metal sulfide and Sb₂O₃ in varying wt.% such as 3, 5 and 7% in a standard friction material formulation. The brake friction composites are fabricated with the compression moulding technique. The tribological properties of the fabricated samples are evaluated by SAE J661a standards. The worn surfaces are characterized by SEM to understand the wear mechanism. The sample with 5 wt.% of the Sb₂O₃ exhibited the overall best performance compared to the other samples of this study.