Abstract: The friction and wear behaviors of the carbon fiber reinforced friction material (CFRFM) were investigated using a D-MS tester. The microstructures and constitutions of the CFRFM surface layer were measured using scanning electronic microscope and energy dispersive spectroscopy respectively; and their influence factors were analyzed according to the experiment results of thermo gravimetric analysis and tribological properties. The experimental results showed that the tribological properties of CFRFM do not reduce evidently, and friction coefficient has a small amount of increase during temperature rising from 100 to 300 ℃. The surface of CFRFM consists of three layers: iron-rich layer, which plays an important role in improving tribological properties of the material surface, thermodynamic loosened layer, and deformation reinforced layer. High heat conductivity, favorable to decrease the depth of the heat affected layer on the friction surface, has an important effect on the surface structure of CFRFM, under present experimental conditions, the depth of the heat affected layer is about 0.55 mm.

Key words: friction materials, carbon fiber, friction surface, iron-rich layer