Case studies

Unhappy with excessive disc wear (<1 million Km life) a UK based client wanted to achieve > 1.2 million km service life. This was not possible with the existing friction pair (steel discs & high temperature organic pads).
Faiveley Transport assessed the real life duty of the vehicle and started the optimisation process (under the worst case safety capability consideration).
This process showed that the targets would not be achieved with the existing friction pair, so Faiveley Transport optimised the disc – pad materials (for normal operation and an appropriate disc design).
The result, a compacted graphic iron disc with conforming pads, was duly tested and certified. This solution allows disc wear life > 2.4 million km and disc crack life of 2.4 million km. The friction pair improvement for the total car contract on wheel sets provides substantial savings over the next ten years.