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For vehicle transmissions, limited slip devices, and brakes employing wet friction elements, there are growing demands for improvements in reliability, performance and durability. In order to meet the requirements, it is essential to improve the paper type wet friction material applied to such mechanical devices. Remarkably, the durability of the paper is most important because it directly determines the life of the devices. This article presents advanced paper type wet friction materials which have achieved both greater heat resistance and the mechanical fatigue resistance strength, together. Additionally, this article refers to development of Non-paper type friction materials with three dimensional structure to meet the highest durability demands.

Recently high heat resistant friction materials containing synthetic fibers have been developed to meet the requirements from heavy-duty vehicle manufactures. However, traditional cut in groove process (hereafter, CIG process) cannot cut grooves on these materials clearly. Projection near groove and fuzz inside of groove exist after the CIG process. The projection and fuzz are generally considered the reason of high drag torque during idling [1]. But very little information was provided to deal with the projection and fuzz and how to reduce the drag torque caused by projection and fuzz. In this paper, various processes will be discussed to reduce drag torque and an optimized groove specification will also be proposed for high heat resistant friction materials for heavy-duty vehicles.

Reduction of the drag torque and longevity of the clutch assembly are the most important factors for vehicle transmission improvement. The decreasing trend of the drag torque with speed after its peak is a common characteristic of the clutch assembly. Several theoretical models have been presented by the researchers describing the drag torque characteristics at lower clutch speed region. However, very little study has been made on the drag torque behavior at very high clutch speed region (6000~10000+ rpm). The unwanted occurrence of drag torque jump up at high speed operating condition remains unexplained till date. In this paper, we have investigated the possible reasons of torque jump up at high rotation speed and solution to overcome this problem. We have presented an analytical correlation of torque jump up with the excessive decrease of local static pressure and assumed that vacuum formation is one of the possible reasons of high speed torque rising and associated vibration.