Italcementi and Italian brake systems maker Brembo will jointly produce cement-based brake pads with low ecological impact. The research is funded by the ?Life? programme of the European Union and is being conducted by Brembo, Italcementi and the Mario Negri Institute, which for many years has been committed to biomedical research and the impact of pollutants on the environment and health.
The ?Cobra? project was launched at the end of 2014. Some 41 researchers with varying skills and experience will work within the project in the next four years. The novel brake pad production technology will be based on an innovative hydraulic binder composition instead of phenolic resins, at comparable braking performance. State-of-the-art brake pads are constituted by thermosetting phenolic resins, which are suitable for friction and relatively high contact temperature applications. Moreover, reinforcing and filling constituents, about 90 per cent in mass, are incorporated into the polymeric matrix.
The raw materials involved in the hydraulic binder production will allow less energy consumption (75-83 MJ/kg phenolic resin compared to 3-9.4 MJ/kg cement) and water consumption (94-282 L/kg phenolic resin compared to 1.7-5.1L/kg cement). In addition, the technology will avoid the emission of aerosols and secondary ultrafine particulate, PM0.1 in particular, generated by traditional phenolic-resin-made pads during braking.