Factorial design to study vibration response of a brake system

The paper examines the contribution and interactions of four parameters to vibration response of a brake pad during braking: the applied load, the speed of rotation of the disc, the roughness of the disc and pad, and the Young's modulus of the disc and pad. The experiments are performed by simulating braking on a micro-tribometer. A statistical procedure, 2^k factorial design, is used to examine the effects and interactions of these four parameters on the vibration response of the pad in terms of the torque on the disc. Results suggested that the main effects Disc tangential velocity has the most significant influence followed by Young's modulus, and applied load. The model also suggested that the roughness is the least significant of the main effects, less significant than some interactions between other main effects, which indicate that the low frequency vibration at low speed is not necessarily associated with friction due to the low significance of the surface roughness.