Braking Performance of Ceramic Coated Discs

Bu-Byoung Kang, Kang-Youn Choe, Hyeong-Jin Kim

Korea Railroad Research Institute
374-1 Woulam-Dong, Uiwang-city, Kyonggi-Do, Korea
TEL: +82-343-461-8531(Ext328)
FAX: +82-343-461-8561
E-mail: bbkang@krri.re.kr
Grard DEGALLAIX
Laboratoire de Mcanique de Lille, Ecole Centrale de Lille, Lille, France
E-mail: Gerard.Degallaix@ec-lille.fr
ABSTRACT
For the speed up the train and the reduction of maintenance costs, we need to develop new brake disc
materials with higher frictional performance and longer service life. An interesting alternative is ceramic
materials. The advantages of ceramic materials are lower wear rate and higher resistance to thermal
shocks. However, bulk ceramic materials show low fracture toughness and difficulty in fabricating to the
required shape. On the other hand, the use of ceramic coatings give good solutions to those problems.
Plasma spraying technique, which ensures thick ceramic coatings, has been chosen as a good method to
produce coatings on a metallic substrate.
In this study, three kinds of brake discs including two coated brake discs and one steel disc were tested
under the same experimental conditions on a reduced scale braking test bench. Braking test bench was
specially designed to analyse thermo-mechanical and frictional behaviors of two sizes of brake discs in
stop and hold braking modes. Plasma spray coating technique was used to coat ceramic powder on the
discs.
In the test, four commercial sintered brake pads were coupled with discs. Ceramic coated discs have
shown good stability in friction coefficient at high speed and high energy braking conditions. However,
ceramic coated discs caused more wear loss of pad mass than the steel disc. It was shown that thermal
barrier effect in ceramic coated discs adjusted the thermal partition between pad and disc. Steel disc
showed fluctuating friction coefficient at high speed but less wear loss of pad mass than ceramic coated
discs.
Keywords: Ceramic coated brake disc, Friction coefficient, Mass wear loss, Thermal barrier effect
1. Introduction
For the speed up of the train and the reduction of maintenance costs, we need to develop new brake
materials for high energy braking conditions with higher frictional performance and longer service life.
When high-speed train is stopped from the high speed like 350km/h or more, high energy is dissipated
on the friction surface of pad and disc. And disc and pad are under the high temperature and high
braking pressure condition. So we need to develop new materials with stable frictional performance
and higher wear resistance for the reduction of maintenance costs. Interesting alternatives are ceramic
materials and carbon materials.
Ceramic materials are chosen for the experimental study . The advantag es of ceramic materials are lower
wear rate and higher resistance to thermal shocks. However, bulk ceramic materials show low fracture
toughness and difficulty in fabricating to the required shape. On the other hand, the use of ceramic
coatings gives good solutions to those problems. Plasma spraying technique, which ensures thick ceramic
coatings, has been chosen to produce coatings on a metallic substrate.
Ceramic coatings can endure high surface temperature. Low thermal conductivity of ceramic materials
shows thermal barrier effect. This effect decreases the proportion of heat transferred to the disc substrate
and reduces the temperature rise of the disc substrate. This also decreases the amount of plastic
deformation, and metal seizure due to localized high flash temperature during high energy braking. In this
way, the ceramic-coated brake disc leads to stable frictional performance and decreases the wear.
However, high proportion of the heat transferred to the pad side and high hardness of disc surface make
the pad be under the severe conditions. Therefore, we should examine the associated phenomena between
coated disc and pad.
In this study , three kinds of brake discs including two coated brake discs and one steel disc were tested

under the same experimental conditions on a reduced scale braking test bench. Braking test bench was
specially designed for stop and hold braking tests.
2. Experiment
2.1 Braking test bench and specimen
Reduced scale braking test bench as shown in Fig. 1 was used. The test bench has electric inertia
simulation mechanism and can control spindle speed, braking pressure, braking torque for simulation of
stop/hold/subway braking modes. The cross-section of coated disc and pad are shown in Fig. 2. The
dimensions of discs are shown in Fig. 3. We used two different sizes of discs. The larger disc (Disc1) has
345mm outer diameter and 85mm inner diameter, and the small disc (Disc2) has 265mm outer diameter
and 85mm inner diameter. We tested two ceramic-coated discs and one steel disc currently used for TGV
and 4 commercial sintered pads used also for TGV. The ingredients and specifications of coating powders
are shown in Table 1 and 2

Braking test bench

The cross-section of the disc and the pad

2.2 Test method

Braking tests are performed on same experimental conditions and procedures as in Table 3 and 4 for
different couples of the discs and the pads. We tested two kinds of test modes, emergency stop braking
and hold braking simulating the conditions of running down the slope. We control the specific contact
pressure or initial speed in stop braking test, and control the torque or speed for hold braking test in order
to see the braking performance under different braking conditions. We measured the temperatures of discs
and pads with K type thermocouple during the braking period. Temperature measurement positions in the
disc and pad are shown in Fig. 3. We also measured the pad mass wear after each test step of braking
tests. We had bed-in test before the start of braking tests for all couples.

Temperature measurement positions in the disc and the pad

Table 1: Materials for tested brake discs and pads

Table 2: Geometrical properties of brake discs

3. Discussion
3.1 Thermal behavior
Fig. 4 shows the temperature evolutions of three different discs and pad C under hold braking conditions.
Temperature difference between pad and Zirconia coating disc is larger than that between pad and steel
disc. This results from the thermal barrier effects of zirconia coating. Thermal barrier effect of ceramic
materials results from low conductivity caused by the porosity of materials. In the case of Zirconia disc,
much portions of heat is transferred to the pad, so the pad temperature is very high. However in the case
of steel disc, pad temperature is low and even lower than disc temperature. This means that more portion
of dissipated energy is transferred to the steel disc compared with the case of the ceramic-coated disc.
Fig.5 shows the temperature evolution of discs and pads under stop braking conditions. Zirconia coated
disc shows the biggest thermal barrier effect among three discs.

Fig. 4: Temperature evolution of the discs and the pads during hold braking test

Fig. 5: Temperature evolution of the discs and the pads during stop braking test
3.2 Friction coefficients
3.2.1 Hold braking
Dissipated energy vs. maximum temperature and mean friction coefficient characteristics of the three
couples with pad B are shown in Fig. 6 and 7. Maximum temperature shown in Fig.6 is the maximum
temperature measured during braking process like one shown in Fig.4, and mean friction coefficient

shown in Fig.7 is the average of the friction coefficients during braking process like one shown in Fig.8
under different braking conditions.

Fig. 6: Dissipated energy vs. maximum temperature: hold braking test with disc 2

Fig. 7: Dissipated energy vs. mean friction coefficient: hold braking test with disc 2
Temperature of disc and pad increase proportionally with increasing of dissipated energy, and the
temperature difference between disc and pad is not much varying with increasing dissipated energy as
shown in Fig.6. The temperature differences between pad and zirconia coated disc that has bigger thermal

barrier effect than other discs are the biggest of the three cases. Mean friction coefficients of cermet-pad
B and zirconia-pad B couples show more stable state than steel disc-pad B couple according to the
increase of dissipated energy as shown in Fig.7
Fig.8 and Fig.9 show friction coef ficient evolution during hold braking test, which was performed for 3
to 5 minutes for the simulation of high energy dissipated braking conditions for ceramic-coated disc and
steel disc. Ceramic-coated discs show apparently stable friction coefficient at high energy braking
conditions. Among couples, zirconia-pad B, cermet-pad B, and zirconia-pad C couples show stable
frictional performance in descending order. Steel disc had shown fluctuating friction coefficient. But in
couple with pad C the fluctuation is changing with small amplitude about the constant mean value of 0.4,
and with pad B fluctuation is very small and gradually increases with time. Steel-pad D couple shows
unstable result and the test was stopped at 130sec.

Fig. 8: Friction coefficient evolution during the hold braking test with ceramic coated discs

Fig. 9: Friction coefficient evolution during the hold braking test with 28CDV5 discs
3.2.2 Stop braking
Fig.10 shows the mean friction coefficient vs. initial contact velocity characteristics of cermet and steel
disc coupled with pad B. Cermet disc show very stable friction coefficient and lower friction coefficients
for higher contact pressure.

Fig. 10: Mean friction coefficient vs. initial contact speed: stop braking test with disc2

Fig. 11: Friction coefficient evolution during the stop braking test with pad C and disc2
Fig.11 shows the friction coefficient evolution in the stop braking test of 30m/s contact linear velocity
(2604rpm) and contact normal force of 666N(normal pressure 0.53Mpa) for three different couples with
pad C.
Cermet disc shows stable friction coefficients from beginning of the test. However, steel disc and zirconia
coated disc shows rooster tailing phenomena of increasing friction coefficient at the end of braking. In the
beginning of the stop braking, three different kinds of disc show similar tendency. But as speed is
decelerated at the end of the braking, zirconia and steel disc show abrupt increase in friction coefficient,
while cermet disc shows small increase. The test result can be explained from the reason that cermet disc
cause faster pad surface wear before material transformation is taking place. But zirconia disc suffered
surface change and transformation and caused stick-slip at low speed. Cermet disc caused more pad mass
wear than other discs as shown in Fig.13.

Fig. 12: Friction coefficient evolution during the stop braking test with disc1
Fig.12 shows the results of high speed stop braking tests. Cermet disc and pad B couple shows most
stable friction coefficients. But pad mass wear is larger than any other couples as shown in Fig.13. In the
beginning, friction coefficient is high as shown in Fig.12 and then decreasing to the stable value during
the braking and rising again at the end of the test. Evolution of friction coefficient seems to result from
the reason that the surface layer made of wear debris causes the decreasing of friction coefficient, and
transformation of surface layer and wear debris cause the rising of friction coefficient at the end of the
braking. Rooster tailing phenomena is larger in steel disc than cermet disc.
3.3 Pad mass wear
The pad mass wear per dissipated energy was measured after each braking step shown in Table 3 and 4,
and the total pad mass wear per energy is shown in Fig.13 for all tested couples. The pad mass wear
coupled with small disc show the result of the smallest wear in steel disc. The friction couples with larger
disc show similar tendency in pad mass wear, but 1.5 times larger than couples with small disc. This is
because the result with larger disc includes the test under high normal pressure and high-speed conditions.
Cermet disc coupled with pad B show stable friction coefficient but larger pad mass wear. This is because
cermet-coated disc with metallic ingredients, which have high hardness, cause the wear of the pad surface
before oxidized friction surface was made on the disc surface and keep the surface under uniform
conditions.

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Table 3: Braking test procedure for disc1

Table 4: Braking test procedure for disc2

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Disc surface temperature is known as the dominant factor to wear of steel disc. Similarly in this study
,
steel disc cause greater pad mass wear loss in high-speed stop braking test and high energy hold braking
test. But comparing to other disc, steel disc shows smallest pad mass wear per energy as shown in Fig.13.
Mass wear of pad A was smaller than that of other pads. But thick hard layer of about 1mm thickness was
formed on pad surface and locally detached from the pad surface. Severe transformation of pad surface
like surface layer detaching cause great change in friction coefficient and unstable friction coefficient as
shown in Fig.8 Pad D show larger pad mass wear than any other pads as shown in Fig.13 and show
unstable friction coefficient as shown in Fig.9.

Fig. 13: Pad mass wear loss of the braking pairs after finishing all braking test steps
Pads used in this study are composed of Cu as main component and Fe, graphite, silica, Al2O3 as friction
control elements. All particles are mixed uniformly but the particle sizes are different in each pad. Pad C,
B, D have smaller particle size than pad A. Pad A has bigger graphite particles than other pads. Pad C and
B composed of small particles show stable friction coefficient and more healthy surface state after testing.
4. Conclusions
Three different kinds of brake discs including two coated brake discs and one steel disc coupled with four
commercial sintered pads were tested on a reduced scale braking test bench for friction, temperature, wear
analysis. The following results are drawn through the test.
- Ceramic coated discs had shown good stability in friction coefficient at high speed and high energy
braking conditions. But Ceramic coated discs caused more pad mass wear loss than the steel disc.
- Zirconia disc showed the bigger thermal barrier effect and more stable friction coefficient at high energy
braking conditions than cermet disc. Cermet disc showed stable friction coefficient under nearly all
conditions but caused larger pad mass wear than zirconia disc.
- It was shown that thermal barrier effect in ceramic-coated discs adjusted the thermal partition between
pad and disc.

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- Steel disc had shown fluctuating friction coefficient at high speed and high energy braking conditions.
but less pad mass wear loss than ceramic coated discs.
In the future, we need to develop new pad materials for ceramic discs to maintain longer service life of
pad. Also we should examine the durability of ceramic coating to assure service life and reliability
through endurance test.
5. Bibliography
Bu-Byoung Kang, Nam-Uk Baeg, Kyung-Soo Jang, 1998, "Experimental Analysis of Ceramic Coated
Brake Discs for High Speed Train", KSME(KOR), Vol 22, No 5, pp. 821_833.

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