Production of low wear friction lining material from agro-industrial wastes

This research aims at producing and characterizing a low-wear friction lining material using a hybrid mixture of burnt vehicle tyres, pulverized palm kernel shell (PKS), pulverized coconut shell (CS), iron and brass filings obtained from the machine shop floor. The Taguchi method was used to determine the optimum parameter settings to obtain a friction lining with a low wear rate by exploring the signal-to-noise ratios (S/N) of the smaller-the-better. The developed friction lining was subjected to the scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to ascertain the functional groups present in the friction lining, their elemental composition and finally the morphology. The control factors used in the Taguchi analysis are the moulding temperature, cure time and heat treatment. The optimum parameter settings for a low wear rate were obtained as follows: moulding temperature of 175 °C, cure time of 8 min and heat treatment time of 3 h. The XRF spectroscopy indicated that the developed friction lining materials contained the following compounds in large proportions: CaO, SiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 and Fe 2 O 3 . The SEM-EDX results for the two image scans reported show that carbon and oxygen were the predominant elements observed in the micrograph.