Diagnostic procedure on brake pad assembly based on Young's modulus estimation

Quality control of brake pads is an important issue, since the pad is a key component of the braking system. Typical damage of a brake pad assembly is the pad–backing plate detachment that affects and modifies the mechanical properties of the whole system. The most sensitive parameter to the damage is the effective Young's modulus, since the damage induces a decrease of the pad assembly stiffness and therefore of its effective Young's modulus: indeed its variation could be used for diagnostic purposes. The effective Young's modulus can be estimated from the first bending resonance frequency identified from the frequency response function measured on the pad assembly. Two kinds of excitation methods, i.e. conventional impulse excitation and magnetic actuation, will be presented and two different measurement sensors, e.g. laser Doppler vibrometer and microphone, analyzed. The robustness of the effective Young's modulus as a diagnostic feature will be demonstrated in comparison to the first bending resonance frequency, which is more sensitive to geometrical dimensions. Variability in the sample dimension, in fact, will induce a variation of the resonance frequency which could be mistaken for damage. The diagnostic approach has been applied to a set of undamaged and damaged pad assemblies showing good performance in terms of damage identification. The environmental temperature can be an important interfering input for the diagnostic procedure, since it influences the effective Young's modulus of the assembly. For that reason, a test at different temperatures in the range between 15 °C and 30 °C has been performed, evidencing that damage identification technique is efficient at any temperature. The robustness of the Young's modulus as a diagnostic feature with respect to damping is also presented.