Magnetic brakes material characterization under accelerated testing conditions

Harvester and agricultural machines are driven both manually and automatically on swarm strategies. In order to avoid undesired movements of the machine, powerful brakes (clutches) are installed on the steering rod to keep track of the machine movements and correct them if undesired events like sudden changes from the original path are detected. The need to operate with reliable and robust devices suggested to design a durability testing bench to assess different braking material performance. In this paper a test bench has been developed to perform wear out characterization and data gathering from different braking materials mounted on a single brake configuration. The proposed work aims at the development of both a robust testing device from the mechanical perspective and a measurement system able to perform accelerated testing controlling the testing temperature and a suitable ageing model for a subset of commercial metallic/epoxide powders used for braking purposes. The work proposes for the first time, some ageing laws parameters for a commonly used braking material exploited in braking systems for heavy duty steering column machines.