Wear data analysis of friction materials to investigate the simultaneous influence of operating parameters and compositions

Abstract

The present paper deals with the wear data analysis of friction composites where, the nature and the concentration of the abrasives were varied systematically in steps of 2%. The abrasives selected were; SiC, SiO 2, ZrO 2 and Al 2O 3 in the concentration range of 2–6%. The wear studies on the composites were carried out on a pad-on-disc type tribo-tester. The wear data analysis was carried out based on an orthogonal experimental design following regression analysis method to examine the simultaneous influence of braking pressure, sliding velocity, concentration of abrasives and their interactions. It was observed that the braking pressure was the most influencing factor in controlling the wear performance, whereas the sliding speed effects tended to abate the contributions by the other parameters. The wear performance of such composites was found to be composition dependent with optimal parametric influences that was specific with the nature of the abrasive. Multiple attribute decision-making approach (MADM) was adopted to weigh the influence of each parameter in terms of entropy irrespective of the nature and content of abrasive under the selected operating conditions. The entropy weights have revealed the optimal level of parametric influences for the incremental formulation design and performance optimisation.