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The design of a braking system involves a delicate balance between the friction pair, the disc and pad, where the pad is a complex blend of constituents to provide predictable characteristics, typically, a known and consistent friction level. In its base form the brake has to absorb the vehicle kinetic energy by converting it into heat. This heat absorption by the friction pair can result in chemical and physical interactions with the release of debris about which we know little. Other than environmental concerns, brake dust causes unnecessary problems with wear, thermal gradients (hot banding) and NVH. This paper is concerned with the removal and collection of brake debris from the friction interface - the debris being regarded as solids and airborne particles, the latter less than 10μm in size. The test procedure consisted of a Burnish program followed by 8 different drive cycles. The overall effects of debris removal is then reported for each test.

Asymmetry is applied to a heavy-duty commercial twin calliper disc brake rotor as a means to alleviate an undesirable high amplitude noise. The problematic frequency is 2400 Hz, the rotor blade exhibiting a 5-diametric mode order of vibration. The asymmetry is introduced by drilling sets of radial holes into the disc rim. Modal analysis is carried out over a range of frequencies using added masses applied magnetically to the rim of the rotor This shows the amplitudes at set frequencies to reduce considerably when asymmetry is introduced. When a set of 5 masses is added to the rotor the vibration amplitude at the troublesome frequency is seen to be considerably reduced. Finite element analysis complements the experimental results.