TY - JOUR A1 - Mege-Revil, Alexandre A1 - Rapontchombo-Omanda, Jessie A1 - Serrano Munoz, Itziar A1 - Cristol, Anne-Lise A1 - Magnier, Vincent A1 - Dufrenoy, Philippe T1 - Sintered Brake Pads Failure in High-Energy Dissipation Braking Tests: A Post-Mortem Mechanical and Microstructural Analysis N2 - The industrial sintering process used to produce metallic matrix pads has been altered to diminish the amount of copper used. Unfortunately, replacing a large part of the copper with iron seems to have reached a limit. In the high-energy, emergency-type rail braking used in this study, the materials are put to the very limit of their usage capacity, allowing us to observe the evolution of the microstructure and mechanical properties of sintered, metallic matrix pads. After the braking test, their compressive behaviour was assessed using digital image correlation (DIC), and their microstructure with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The worn material has three flat layers with different microstructures and compressive behaviours. The bo􀁇om layer seems unmodified. Macroscopic and microscopic cracks run through the intermediate layer (2–15 mm depth). The top layer has stiffened thanks to resolidification of copper. The temperature reaches 1000 °C during the braking test, which also explains the carbon diffusion into iron that result in the weakening of iron–graphite interfaces in the pad. Finally, submicronic particles are detected at many open interfaces of the worn and compressed pad. Associated with the predominant role of graphite particles, this explains the weak compressive behaviour of the pads. KW - Friction braking KW - Sintering KW - Metallic matrix pad KW - Microstructure KW - Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) KW - Compressive test KW - Cracks KW - Digital image correlation (DIC) KW - Diffusion PY - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-587318 SN - 1996-1944 VL - 16 IS - 21 SP - 1 EP - 18 PB - MDPI AN - OPUS4-58731 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -