Building Safer Vehicles With Brembo

Braking systems are a critical safety component of cars. Brake discs are spinning rotors within wheels, and when brakes are applied, hydraulic pressure clamps down on either side of these discs, creating friction that brings your car to a stop. Brake discs are almost always made of gray cast iron due to its unrivaled material properties. The metal handles mechanical stress, high friction, and extreme temperatures very well without breaking. It is also highly machineable — meaning it is easily cut and shaped — making it desirable to work with and incredibly reliable for braking systems. 

Like all things, however, gray cast iron ages, meaning its mechanical, physical, and chemical properties gradually change over time, which alters its machinability and potentially its performance and safety. As the global leader in high-performance braking systems, it is vital that Brembo ensures the reliable operation of brake discs under all environmental and mechanical conditions, as failure would be detrimental to a vehicle’s safety. 

As widely used as gray cast iron is, the underlying mechanisms that drive its aging are poorly understood, which presents manufacturers with the challenges of predicting and controlling these effects during the production process. In collaboration with UC Berkeley Engineering professor Peter Hoseman, a specialist in materials under extreme conditions, Brembo looked to Master of Engineering (MEng) students to investigate the aging behavior of gray cast iron and discern its implication for manufacturing and performance. 

Students are “able to analyze challenges from a novel academic lens, providing new perspectives on industrial optimization opportunities,” project advisor and Berkeley MEng alumni Amanda Brief said. Those students were Anjali Jakasania, Haojun Yan, and Kurum Lectch, all materials science and mechanical engineers and class of 2026 graduates of the Master of Engineering program. In their nine-month Capstone project, they investigated alloy designs, microstructural components, elemental composition, and heat treatment to determine their effects on cast iron aging. 

By identifying, characterizing, and understanding the formation of micro-precipitates generated during the cast iron solidification process, the students will enhance production at Brembo by allowing them to understand the implications for machinability and production of gray cast iron. The team is especially proud to have identified titanium as an anti-aging element that will help Brembo with future studies, as well as reduce processing time, aging, and manufacturing costs.

“I’m really proud that we were able to give direction to this research for Brembo,” Jakasania shared. 

Throughout their project, the team worked closely with Brembo’s technical teams, with direct access to materials produced at their factories. This industrial partnership, compounded with the expertise of Professor Hoseman and his lab provided a unique opportunity for these students. It taught them how to ensure their solutions were both scientifically valid and industrially scalable, as well how to effectively and professionally present their findings. 

From an industrial standpoint, “working with MEng students serves as a valuable reminder that external collaboration is an important part of innovation” and that “there is still much more investigation to be done.” Throughout the project, the students frequently exchanged ideas and challenges with the company, and collaborated to resolve inconsistencies in their research.

“Working with an industry partner gives you that sense of, once you go out in the real world, what it’s gonna be like, not just inside of a lab,” Jakasania shared. 

This group exemplified what the Master of Engineering program seeks to achieve: equipping engineers with the technical rigor and real-world perspective to solve problems that matter. For Jakasania, Yan, and Lectch, that was a meticulous investigation of materials that will make the vehicle we all drive safer.