Eureka Clusters SMART: Sistema de disco de freno y pastilla de freno de fundición gris a juego, con menores emisiones de partículas

The requesting company is a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) located in Ankara, Türkiye. It provides contract heat treatment and surface engineering services to industrial customers from several plants and operates an officially approved in-house research and development (R&D) centre. Its fields of work are metallurgy, thermochemical surface treatment and process control for automotive and machinery components. The company treats parts supplied by its customers and does not manufacture finished products.
Background. Brake discs and pads are a major source of non-exhaust particulate emissions from road traffic. Regulation (EU) 2024/1257 (Euro 7) sets the first limits for brake particle emissions of passenger cars, expressed as particulate matter below 10 micrometres (PM10): 7 mg/km for combustion and hybrid vehicles and 3 mg/km for battery electric vehicles. The limits apply to new vehicle types from 29 November 2026. Compliance is checked on a brake dynamometer with the WLTP brake cycle described in UN Global Technical Regulation No. 24 and the newer UN Regulation No. 179.
Planned project. The company will coordinate a Turkish group made up of a grey cast iron brake disc foundry, a friction material producer and a vehicle manufacturer. The group plans to develop a matched brake disc and brake pad system with lower wear and lower particle emission. The disc is made of alloyed grey cast iron and receives a combined heat treatment of stress relieving and a nitrocarburising-based surface modification. The pad is a friction material formulated for the treated disc surface. The vehicle manufacturer defines the requirements and validates braking performance at vehicle level.
Current status. Laboratory and dynamometer tests have so far used only heat-treated discs made of non-alloyed cast iron with standard pads. Compared with untreated discs, wear of discs and pads was reduced by about 45 to 50%, and PM10 emission in a WLTP brake test by about one third. Projected to vehicle level, the result is still slightly above the Euro 7 limit. The combined system of alloyed disc, heat treatment and matched pad does not exist yet. Developing and validating it, and explaining how the treated surface and the pad interact (friction layer formation, wear mechanisms, particle generation), are the aims of the project. Vehicle-level brake particle measurement is outside the scope, and vehicle values are projected from disc-level results using the front to rear brake bias.
Why international partners are needed. The Turkish group has no particle emission test facility that follows the regulation and is accepted by European customers. It also lacks experience with digital twins and digital product passports for brake components, and it needs life cycle assessment capacity at the required depth. Further partners are needed to deepen the scientific analysis of the tribological mechanisms and to support market entry in Europe.
Planned cooperation. The company is preparing a joint application to the Eureka Clusters SMART call (project outline deadline 26 January 2027), where each country funds its own participants. A research cooperation agreement is proposed, in which each foreign partner is a full R&D partner with its own work package, budget and rights to results. A technical cooperation agreement would cover test methods, data exchange and training of the Turkish partners. Full partnership is preferred to subcontracting because test data, models and methods will be produced jointly and must be accepted by customers in several countries. A consortium agreement will regulate intellectual property and later licensing or supply arrangements.


Innovation. Common approaches to reducing brake dust are low-emission pads tuned for untreated cast iron discs, hard coatings on the disc surface (for example thermal spray or laser cladding), and particle capture devices at the caliper. The planned project treats disc and pad as one system: the disc surface is modified by a diffusion-based heat treatment that is part of the disc itself, and the pad is formulated for that surface.
Results so far (heat-treated non-alloyed disc and standard pad, compared with untreated disc):
• Disc and pad wear reduced by about 45 to 50% in full-scale dynamometer tests.
• PM10 reduced by about 34% and PM2.5 by about 60% in a WLTP brake test.
• Surface hardness about three times higher, with a more stable friction coefficient at high temperature.
• Project target: meet the Euro 7 PM10 limit at vehicle level while keeping the wear reductions with the alloyed disc.
• No separate coating layer, so no coating-substrate interface or risk of detachment. The treatment is intended for existing disc designs and casting lines.
• A digital twin and product passport data set will link process parameters, test results and life cycle data to support type approval documents and customer audits.

Know-how. The coordinating company has experience in nitriding, nitrocarburising and process control. The consortium covers the chain from disc casting to vehicle validation.


Framework program
Eureka
Call title and identifier
Eureka Clusters SMART Call 10 – 2026
Submission and evaluation scheme
Anticipated project budget
Coordinator required
No
Deadline for EoI
24 Jan 2027
Deadline of the call
26 Jan 2027
Project duration in weeks
Web link to the call
https://www.eurekanetwork.org/programmes-and-calls/eureka-clusters/smart-call-10-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com