Brakes are an important part of any vehicle as they enable the control of its speed. In modern automotive braking systems, there are several components working simultaneously, with the disc and brake pads having the greatest influence. For the latter, asbestos and copper have been used in the past to create the most efficient friction compound. Because of known negative health and environmental effects these materials have been withdrawn from the braking industry. In my thesis we made brake pads which contained graphene as a substitute for copper. The focus of our research was to perform electron microscopic, thermogravimetric and thermal analysis of these pads. From the microscopic analysis we discovered that to get a better view of the microstructure we should have first eliminated some of the materials for the friction mixture. Similarly in the thermogravimetric and thermal analysis, the pads contained too many different materials hence we couldn’t determine which reactions took place in the friction mixture due to the edition of graphene.
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