Page Title: Brake Rotor Wear Reduction

Steel Clad Aluminum Brake

Rotor Wear Rate Reduction and Expected
Service Life

The SCA rotor has demonstrated significant wear rate
reduction without compromise of friction coefficient in
dynamometer tests and a long term road test as presented in
Tables 5 and 6. It is not difficult to understand the reason. FIG
19 is a typical microstructure of cast iron material. It consists of
flake graphite and iron (i.e. very low carbon steel) matrix. The
graphite has very low mechanical strength, therefore, the cast
iron can be viewed as a low carbon steel with lot of flake
porosity. If solid without porosity, the low carbon steel should
have better wear resistance than the “porous low carbon
steel”. If a steel with carbon content similar to that of a cast iron
matrix is selected, the steel could present similar friction
coefficient as the cast iron matrix. The entrapped graphite is a
kind of solid lubricant. Therefore, it lowers the friction
coefficient of cast iron matrix. In other words, the selected steel
shows both higher wear resistance and higher friction
coefficient.

FIG 19. Typical cast iron micro-structure,
consisting of flake graphite and iron (i.e. low
carbon steel) matrix

Lighter, Cooler, Better and Greener

LiteBrake Tech, LLC

The Only Available Aluminum Based Front Brake Rotors for Automobiles

SCA Brake

Over ten years, many SCA rotors have been installed on two cars and tested on city and highway roads.
Table 7 presents the wear data of several tested rotors. The SCA rotors allow 2mm wear in their thickness
by the design. The linear estimations of rotor wears for a 100,000 miles service are much less than 2 mm.
We can expect the service life of the SCA rotors well over 100,000 miles on average.