A pin-on-disc simulation of airborne wear particles from disc brakes

A novel test method was used to study the concentration and size distribution of airborne wear particles from disc brake materials. A pin-on-disc tribometer equipped with particle counting instruments was used as test equipment. Material from four different non-asbestos organic (NAO) pads and four different low metallic (LM) pads were tested against material from grey cast iron rotors. The results indicate that the low metallic pads cause more wear to the rotor material than the NAO pads, resulting in higher concentrations of airborne wear particles. Although there are differences in the measured particle concentrations, similar size distributions were obtained. Independent of pad material, the characteristic particle number distributions of airborne brake wear particles have maxima around 100, 280, 350, and 550 nm.