The development of low particulate emissions coatings for Euro 7-compliant disc brake components

The European Commission upcoming Euro 7 emissions standards legislate to ensure that emissions standards for vehicles are extended beyond exhaust emissions and will therefore set limits to particulate emissions from components such as brakes discs. It should be noted that this will apply to all vehicles including electric vehicles and thus will endure beyond the lifetime of current petrol/diesel designs.

Against this background, the proposed project will investigate the development of environmentally-friendly powder alloy coatings for brake disc components and their application by high efficiency laser techniques. This has the wide-ranging potential to reduce particulate emissions from brake components in line with Euro 7 legislation.

Project Components:
- An initial review of the current legislation and technical advances combined with engagement with LSN's industrial partners will identify the potential alloy systems required to deliver a low particulate brake wear solution.
- To meet the required coating/component performance, alloy systems will be developed, and subsequent powder batches produced using small-scale laboratory atomisation, followed by scaling to full-scale close-coupled gas/water atomisation in LSN's facility.
- Once potential powder alloys have been identified and produced, brake component will be fabricated either as a laser-deposited coating onto an existing brake substrate and/or as a high-build additive layer component of a bespoke design.
- Once a successful process/design has been delivered, wear performance of the coating in terms of component life and particulate emission will be assessed using laboratory-based techniques to quantify and rank coating performance.