Source: The following is an article by Molie Tudor Mihai, brake specialist at Renault. Posted on LinkedIn concerning the two types of longitudinal brake wear.
Braking, it is a very complex action due to various phenomena and processes which occur during the braking process. The brake system must be a reliable and a high-performance system, in the last period we expect to not record any malfunctions or misbehaves. I know from my experience the braking systems are more complicated than it seems.
Beside the mechanical, thermal and chemical processes it’s very interesting to analyze the tribological effects from brake pad and brake discs friction interfaces, the pad wear pattern can give us some useful indicators.
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So.., in this article I will tell you some interesting things about tapered brake pad wear. This article it’s meant to people who are not brake specialists, but they want to understand the brakes mysterious behaviors.
What is tapered brake pad wear ?
There are two kinds of tapered brake pad wear : one of them it’s the radial tapered pad wear and the other one it’s the longitudinal tapered pad wear.
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When we talk about radial tapered wear, we talk about uneven wear of friction material form inner to outer radius. The longitudinal tapered wear it’s when the thickness of the friction material at leading end (which the first in touch with the brake disc ) it’s much thinner in comparison with trailing end (see picture above).
How this kind of brake pad wear appear ?
It’s very important to know how the pressure it’s distributed on the brake pad, there are two major distributions : static load – where the force distribution has a parabolic shape and dynamic load – where the force has an approximate right- angle triangle shape, the larger pressure it will be at the leading edge.
The entire post, including several images, can be viewed by clicking HERE.
