A Calibrated Modelling Approach for Predicting Dry Friction Wear of Copper-Free Composite Friction Materials

This study presents a calibrated modelling approach for predicting the abrasive wear of copper-free composite friction materials. Four formulations were analysed, including a copper-containing reference material and three experimental compositions in which copper was replaced by different aluminium/polytetrafluoroethylene ratios. Dry ball-cratering tests were performed to determine the apparent wear-rate coefficient under controlled laboratory conditions. The copper-containing reference material showed the lowest wear-rate coefficient, kc = 80.655 × 10−14 m2·N−1, whereas the copper-free formulations reached kc = 111.811 × 10−14 m2·N−1, 98.586 × 10−14 m2·N−1 and 90.579 × 10−14 m2·N−1 for S2, S3 and S4, respectively. Thus, copper replacement increased the apparent wear-rate coefficient by approximately 12–39%, depending on the Al/PTFE ratio. The obtained data were used to develop and compare four calibrated predictive models. Among them, the modified Hertz–Archard model, which included effective hardness and contact-related descriptors, provided the best agreement with the experimental data. This model achieved MAPE = 1.5%, RMSE = 2.181 × 10−14 m2·N−1 and a maximum absolute error of 4.3%, with all predictions within the ±5% error band. The results indicate that the proposed calibration framework can support preliminary screening and ranking of copper-free friction-material formulations under the adopted dry ball-cratering conditions.