Friction materials are applicable for braking and transmission in various machines and equipment. Their composition keeps changing to keep pace with technological development and environmental/legal requirements. For more than 80 years asbestos has been used as a friction material because of its good physical and chemical properties. However, due to the health hazard associated with its handling, it has lost favour and several alternative materials are being increasingly used. Thus, in this work, a non - asbestos friction material was developed using an agro-waste material base - palm kernel shell (PKS)- along with other constituents. Among the agro-waste shells investigated the PKS exhibited more favourable properties. Taguchi optimization technique was used to achieve optimal friction material formulation and manufacturing parameters. The derived friction material was used to produce automobile disk brake pads. The laboratory brake pads were tested for wear and effectiveness on a car. When compared with a premium asbestos-based commercial brake pad they were found to have performed satisfactorily. However, more pad wear was observed on the PKS pad at high vehicular speeds beyond 80km/hour. The results suggest that palm kernel shell could be a possible replacement for asbestos in friction lining materials
A new flux based on NaCl – CaCl2 – CaF2 – Na3AlF6 was developed for the gas
welding of aluminium and its alloys. The flux was generated by the application of the Hadamard
multivariate chemical composition model. The model uses a 8 x 8 matrix and a full factorial
analysis to generate several compositions within given ranges of the constituent flux elements.
Mechanical and field tests were carried out on weldments made with the flux. The tensile strength,
Izod impact strength and hardness of the all – weld metal were 310MPa, 5.35J and 100BHN. The
weld deposition efficiency was 90.3%.The new flux and two popular commercial fluxes were given
to five expert aluminium welders to use for three months, and were requested to rate the
performances. The results showed that there was an agreement between the responses of the
welders that the new flux performed better than the commercial versions available in Nigeria.
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