Development of a Composite Material from Agro Waste for Wear Resistance Application

The Friction lining is an essential part of braking system. Friction materials have their significant role for transmission in various machines. Their composition keeps on changing to keep pace with technological development and environmental requirements. Earlier asbestos has been used as a friction material because of its good physical and chemical properties. But later researchers eyed that there are many health hazards associated with asbestos handling. The average disk temperature and average stopping time for pass is increased and it has poor dimensional stability. Hence it has lost favor and several alternative materials are being replaced these days. In this work a non-asbestos bio-friction material is enlighten which is developed using an Agro-waste material palm kernel shell (PKS) along with other Ingredients. Among the agro-waste shells investigated the PKS exhibited more favorable properties. The developed friction material is used to produce automobile disk brake pads. The developed brake pads were tested for functional performance on a specially designed experimental test rig. Physical properties of this new material along with wear properties have been determined and reported in this paper. When compared with premium asbestos based commercial brake pad PKS pads were found to have performed satisfactorily in terms of amount of wear and stopping time.