Tough, light, inexpensive composite brake rotors could make their way to regular cars
- Ben Coxworth for www.Gizmag.com January 22nd, 2012
- Source: http://www.gizmag.com/aluminum-composite-brake-rotors/21175/
Currently, brakes made from composite materials tend to be expensive, and as such mainly just find their way onto high-performance cars and motorcycles. That could be about to change, however. Researchers from Michigan-based materials company REL and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) are developing aluminum composite brake rotors for everyday cars. Not only should they be much easier to produce than existing composite rotors, but they should also be 60 percent lighter than their iron counterparts, and last three times as long.
The specific material that the rotors will be made from is a ceramic fiber reinforced, metal matrix composite. Its composition can be tweaked to address the specific tolerances required on different areas of the rotor.