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Lubricants
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Tribology of Friction Brakes
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Tribology of Friction Brakes

A special issue of Lubricants (ISSN 2075-4442).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2026) | Viewed by 2705

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Albert Albers

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
IPEK-Institute of Product Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
Interests: development and innovation management; product generation engineering; lightweight; methods of embodiment design; validation and NVH of technical systems; drive systems and mobility; tribological systems; clutches and brakes in drive systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Remarkable advancements in friction brakes have been observed in various technological fields, ranging from transportation and mobility to industrial stationary, energy and robotics. They play a crucial role in ensuring safety, reliability, durability and efficiency – and recently also in terms of particle emissions. Due to the increasing complexity of systems, material pairings, surface designs, the control and the interactions within the entire system have become more important.

This Special Issue, entitled “Tribology of Friction Brakes”, aims to highlight recent research and findings regarding the tribological behavior of friction brakes, providing insights into the mechanisms implicated in friction and wear, material innovations, holistic development and the investigation of brake systems. We also welcome the submission of papers that perform validation by considering the impact of braking conditions on the overall performance of the system.

The scope of this Special Issue includes, but is not limited to, the following topics:

  • Friction and wear mechanisms,
  • The development of novel friction materials, surfaces and coatings,
  • Thermal management and heat distribution,
  • Noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH),
  • Particulate emissions,
  • Operation conditions, load collectives, control strategy,
  • Monitoring and predictive maintenance,
  • Advanced modeling and simulation,
  • Testing and validation,
  • Friction brakes in electrified drivetrains as part of CPS.

Prof. Dr. Albert Albers
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Lubricants is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • tribology
  • friction
  • wear
  • emission
  • friction brakes
  • brake systems
  • wear particles
  • testing and validation

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

32 pages, 1638 KB  
Article
Automated Detection of Tribologically Relevant Brake Torque Plateaus: A Two-Stage Approach for Flywheel Dynamometer Testing
by Stefan Altstetter, Arne Bischofberger, Sascha Ott and Tobias Düser
Lubricants 2026, 14(5), 210; https://doi.org/10.3390/lubricants14050210 - 20 May 2026
Viewed by 74
Abstract
Reliable identification of the tribologically relevant braking phase in torque signals recorded on flywheel dynamometers is a prerequisite for quantitative friction analysis and data-driven modeling of dry-running friction brakes. We define brake torque plateaus as intervals with quasi-constant surface pressure and appreciable sliding [...] Read more.
Reliable identification of the tribologically relevant braking phase in torque signals recorded on flywheel dynamometers is a prerequisite for quantitative friction analysis and data-driven modeling of dry-running friction brakes. We define brake torque plateaus as intervals with quasi-constant surface pressure and appreciable sliding velocity in which fading or drift of the coefficient of friction is explicitly admissible, while rise and decay ramps dominated by actuator dynamics are excluded. To automate this extraction across large industrial data sets, we propose a two-stage detection algorithm that sequentially narrows the search space using physics-based amplitude, gradient, and stability criteria, complemented by a Pruned Exact Linear Time (PELT)-based fallback for difficult cycles. Evaluation on 10,386 brake cycles, including 275 expert-annotated ground-truth cycles validated by a second independent expert, shows that the proposed method reaches 95% of the inter-annotator agreement ceiling on 75 held-out cycles, achieves a median Intersection-over-Union of 0.893 (11 percentage points above the strongest baseline), and a mean quality score of 9.18/10 across all cycles at under 1 ms per cycle (signals averaging 951 samples), outperforming six baseline configurations in both detection quality and runtime. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tribology of Friction Brakes)
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24 pages, 4803 KB  
Article
Brake Wear Particle Emissions from Dry-Running Friction Systems: Influence of Operating Parameters and Friction Pairing Based on an Application-Oriented Extended Measurement Methodology
by Francesco Pio Urbano, Arne Bischofberger, Sascha Ott and Albert Albers
Lubricants 2026, 14(4), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/lubricants14040170 - 17 Apr 2026
Viewed by 399
Abstract
Non-exhaust particulate emissions are expected to remain a relevant source of traffic-related air pollution, including an increase in electrified vehicle fleets. Particle formation results from tribological interactions and is influenced by both operating conditions and friction material system. This study presents an extended [...] Read more.
Non-exhaust particulate emissions are expected to remain a relevant source of traffic-related air pollution, including an increase in electrified vehicle fleets. Particle formation results from tribological interactions and is influenced by both operating conditions and friction material system. This study presents an extended measurement methodology under application-relevant tribological conditions for the reproducible quantification of PM10 and PM2.5 emissions from dry-running friction systems and applies it to a systematic investigation of operating parameter and friction pairing effects. A dry inertial brake test bench with an enclosed friction chamber and integrated aerosol measurement chain was used under controlled tribologically relevant conditions. Specific friction work and specific friction power were varied by adjusting sliding velocity, contact pressure, and inertial load. Six friction pairings, comprising four representative friction lining types combined with either C45 cast steel or GGG40 gray cast iron, were examined. In situ PM10 and PM2.5 measurements were complemented by gravimetric wear and microstructural analyses. The results show that specific friction work has a direct influence on PM10 and PM2.5 emissions, whereas the independent effect of contact pressure is secondary. Friction power exhibits material-dependent effects. Emissions also vary strongly with friction pairing, indicating that operating conditions and material system must be considered jointly when assessing low-emission brake systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tribology of Friction Brakes)
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17 pages, 5811 KB  
Article
Multiscale and Multiphysics Topographical Analysis of Brake Friction Material Related to Friction Performance
by Robin Guibert, Maël Thévenot, Julie Lemesle, Laurent Coustenoble, Jean-François Brunel, Philippe Dufrénoy and Maxence Bigerelle
Lubricants 2026, 14(3), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/lubricants14030139 - 23 Mar 2026
Viewed by 721
Abstract
Friction braking is the most spread braking system in vehicles, where the morphologies of the disc and the braking pads are essential to ensure that friction reduces rotation speed efficiently. However, modern braking systems are submitted to a complex balance between functionalities: braking [...] Read more.
Friction braking is the most spread braking system in vehicles, where the morphologies of the disc and the braking pads are essential to ensure that friction reduces rotation speed efficiently. However, modern braking systems are submitted to a complex balance between functionalities: braking ability, resistance to wear, and limited noise emission, i.e., squealing. This article studies the evolution of the morphology of a braking pad in a pin-on-disc configuration to further understand its influence over surface functionalities. Data collected from a pin-on-disc tribometer, and topographies are coupled to perform a multiscale and multiphysics analysis of the braking pad surface. Relevancy of roughness parameters regarding braking ability, surface wear, pad temperature and noise emission is evaluated with a bootstrap-based relevancy analysis. Relevant scales of the pad morphological structures are identified for surface wear (446 µm), braking ability (19.5 µm), pad temperature (2717 and 446 µm) and squealing frequency (1720 and 15.7 µm). Correlations between test bench data and roughness parameters highlighted the role of wear plateaus on the braking pad surface. These plateaus are formed by the damaged surface peaks during braking or by compaction of the third body trapped across the braking pad surface. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tribology of Friction Brakes)
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23 pages, 4545 KB  
Article
Waste-Derived Composite Selection for Sustainable Automotive Brake Friction Materials Using Novel MEREC-RAM Decision Framework
by Raj Kumar, Lalit Ranakoti, Akashdeep Negi, Yang Song, Gusztáv Fekete and Tej Singh
Lubricants 2025, 13(12), 533; https://doi.org/10.3390/lubricants13120533 - 8 Dec 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 657
Abstract
This study aims to identify the most suitable slag waste-filled polymer composite for automotive braking applications. It employs a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model that integrates the “method based on the removal effects of criteria” (MEREC) and the “root assessment method” (RAM) method. [...] Read more.
This study aims to identify the most suitable slag waste-filled polymer composite for automotive braking applications. It employs a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model that integrates the “method based on the removal effects of criteria” (MEREC) and the “root assessment method” (RAM) method. Eight slag waste-filled polymer composites, evaluated using seven performance-defining criteria, were considered in the MCDM analysis. The performance evaluation criteria included the friction coefficient, wear, friction fluctuations, friction stability, fade-recovery aspects, and rise in disk temperature. The criteria were weighted through the MEREC approach, which identified fade% (0.2890) and wear (0.2829) as the most important attributes in the assessment. The RAM was employed to rank the alternatives and suggested that the composite alternative with 60 wt.% slag waste and 5 wt.% coir fiber proved to be the best composition for automotive braking applications. The results were validated using nine MCDM models and Spearman correlation coefficients, which showed that the ranking of alternatives was consistent and stable even when the normalization steps of MEREC were swapped. Statistical validation demonstrated a strong predictive accuracy (p < 0.05) with a strong correlation coefficient (>0.8) alongside a minimal mean absolute error. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis was performed by examining several weight situations to determine whether the priority weights influenced the ranking of the composite alternatives. The findings from both the correlation and sensitivity analyses confirm the proposed hybrid MEREC-RAM model’s consistency and effectiveness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tribology of Friction Brakes)
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