The Determination of the Effect of Mixture Proportions and Production Parameters on Density and Porosity Features of Miscanthus Reinforced Brake Pads by Taguchi Method

Abstract

Brake pads are generally consisted of five different component groups. These groups are named as reinforcements, binders, abrasives, lubricants and fillers. Each of these groups has its own function such as to improve friction property, wear resistance, to increase strength, and to reduce porosity and noise. In this study, Miscanthus as reinforcement, cashew as lubricant, alumina as abrasive, calcite as filler, and phenolic resin as binder were used to produce composite ecological brake pad samples. Brake pads are usually developed through trial and error method and therefore, the evaluation process became complicated and time consuming due to the multiplicity of components, randomly selected mixing ratios, results obtained from the experiments, etc. and so Taguchi method is utilized to get rid of these difficulties of trial and error method. This study was made in order to determine the influence level of the brake pad ingredients and some production parameters to the density and porosity features of the brake pad samples. The ecological brake pad samples were manufactured and experiments were conducted to Taguchi Method L32 orthogonal array. According to the ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) tables and other graphical results obtained from Taguchi method, the density feature of brake pad samples are more influenced by the mixture proportion factors and moulding temperature, curing time and curing temperature factors have a minor effect on porosity feature of brake pad samples.