Grey Cast Iron Brake Discs Laser Cladded with Nickel-Tungsten Carbide—Friction, Wear and Airborne Wear Particle Emission

Airborne wear particle emission has been investigated in a pin-on-disc tribometer equipped with particle analysis equipment. The pins are cut out from commercial powder metallurgy automotive brake pads as with and without copper content. The discs are cut out from a commercial grey cast iron automotive brake disc as cut out and as in addition to a laser cladded with a powder mix of Ni-self fluxing alloy + 60% spheroidized fused tungsten carbide and then fine-ground. Dry sliding wear testing runs under a contact pressure of 0.6 MPa, sliding velocity of 2 m/s and a total sliding distance of 14,400 m. The test results show both wear and particle emission improvement by using laser cladded discs. The laser cladded discs in comparison to the reference grey cast iron discs do not alter pin wear substantially but achieves halved mass loss and quartered specific wear. Comparing in the same way, the friction coefficient increases from 0.5 to 0.6, and the particle number concentration decreases from over 100 to some 70 (1/cm³) and the partition of particles below 7 µm is approximately halved.