For the sake of driving safety, the right choice of the brake pad friction material and its manufacturing processes to obtain the appropriate tribological properties is a matter of priority for brake pad manufacturers. Determination of the tribological properties is best done in component tests, i.e. in the setup: brake pads – brake disc. At the request of one of the domestic brake pad manufacturers, as part of the POIR project, an inertia dynamometer for testing friction and wear of brake pads and brake discs was developed and manufactured, which was given the symbol T-33. A test methodology was developed based on the “Cold application section” procedure described in SAE J2522:2003. The T-33 inertia dynamometer is designed for testing brake pads and brake discs intended for five vehicles representing the passenger vehicle class and vans. The paper presents the new test stand, test methodology, and results of verification tests of the T-33 dynamometer (interlaboratory comparison tests) performed on the Cinquecento vehicle brake setup.

Tooth fracture is the most dangerous form of gear wear that excludes the gear from further use. In order to counteract the occurrence of this type of damage, it is very important to properly design the toothed gear. To calculate the gear tooth bending strength, a strength parameter called the nominal stress number σFlim is necessary. ISO 6336-5:2003(E) and available material databases provide σFlim values for the most popular engineering materials used for gears, including those for case-hardened steels. There is, however, no data for a new generation of nanostructured engineering materials, which are the subject of research conducted at the Tribology Department of ITeE – PIB. The σFlim parameter is most often determined in cyclic fatigue tests on toothed gears with specially selected tooth geometry. In order to determine the above strength parameter, a pulsator (symbol T-32) was developed and manufactured at ITeE-PIB in Radom. The article presents a new device, research methodology, and the results of verification tests for case-hardened steel 18CrNiMo7-6, confirming the correctness of the adopted design assumptions and the developed research methodology. The results of tooth bending fatigue tests are the basis for the selection of a new engineering material dedicated to gears, which later undergoes tribological testing.

A new test rig for tribological tests was developed and manufactured. It consists of a mobile device for measurement of the start-up friction torque of transmissions, in particular planetary gearboxes, and the friction torque in dynamically steady conditions, as well as a climatic chamber to stabilize the temperature of the tested gearbox in its extreme range: from -50 to +50°C. In the series of devices for tribological tests, developed and manufactured at the Institute, the new test rig is marked with the symbol T-34. The verification results correspond with the churning losses related to the viscosity characteristics of the lubricating oils. As the temperature increases, both the start-up friction torque and the friction torque under dynamically steady conditions decrease.