Study on tribological performance of CoNiCrAlY/ZrO₂ nano coating on automobile brake pad

In the automobile braking system, the wear and friction results in significant loss. This is influenced by the higher kinetic energy associated with the friction between brake pad and disc. The current research work provides a novel alternative method of enhancing life of the brake pad by providing nano coatings. The work employs development of micro-nano combinational CoNiCrAlY/ZrO₂ coatings on the commercially available 4-wheel vehicle brake pads. The state-of-art in integrating Arduino-board based infrared thermal mapping is effective in correlating temperature distribution with tribological behavior of brake pads. The coating is carried out by the plasma spray technique with micron-sized CoNiCrAlY and nano-ZrO₂ particles as secondary phase particles. The concentration of nano ZrO₂ particles is varied from 0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, and 100%. Further, the influence of surface roughness and coating thickness on the specific wear rate is studied. The microstructure and compositional studies are carried out with a scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The results reveal better specific wear rate for the 10% of nano ZrO₂ particle coatings in the CoNiCrAlY matrix. A coating thicknesses of 200 µm showed the maximum resistance for wear under dry sliding conditions. In the present work the brake pad materials with CoNiCrAlY coating and with the addition of nano ZrO₂ particles has found significant increase in the wear resistance by 106.0% and 275.32% respectively.