Consumable materials pollution has been increasing during recent years. The optimization of vehicle engines lead to an important decrease of fine dust related to combustion. On the other hand fine dust, coming from brake pads, pneumatics and roads has been growing. Most of the fine dust produced by consumables is released in urban areas, making its analysis and monitoring an important issue.

A significant part of this kind of pollution is generated by the braking system. In fact almost every terrestrial transport method (cars, bikes, trains or planes) has a braking system. The consumable part of the system is composed by a pad of friction material and a metallic rotor. These pads are composed by a series of ceramic and metallic materials joint together by a polymer matrix, generally a phenolic resin.

The aim of this work is to determine the most significant gases that are released during the thermal degradation of phenolic resins. Thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) were carried out using an equipment coupled with mass spectrometer (MS). Two different samples of phenolic resin, commonly used in braking industry, named Phe_1 and Phe_2, have been investigated. Thermal degradation has been studied both in air and in inert atmosphere (Argon).

Luca Di Gregorio, Silvia Ronchetti, Barbara Onida - Department of Applied Science and Technology