Development of a method for evaluating brake material wear using the acoustic emission method

Current methods for evaluating the wear of railway brake materials in dynamo bench testing are based on empirical rules that require repeated testing. These tests require human resources, time and costs. However, the current method does not directly measure the phenomena of friction or wear. Therefore, an evaluation of the wear was conducted using the acoustic emission (AE) method in terms of physics. Testing was conducted on full-scale dynamo bench tests on brake shoes and pads that are widely used in conventional railway vehicles. A method for estimating the amount of wear using AE signal analysis was developed. The relative error between the measured and estimated values was small. Furthermore, it was found that possible to estimate the instantaneous amount of wear.