The cryogenic treatment of rotors or cryo-rotors is the freezing of rotors. It is a special process that involves exposing brake rotors in freezing temperatures in order to add more durability and extend their life expectancy.
The treatment is intended to provide rotors with the ability to withstand a greater amount of heat that comes from the mechanical use of rotors, thereby reducing overheating and thermal shock. Cryo-treated rotors have been found to reduce vibrations, noise and other issues - which means that the rate of change of rotors is reduced significantly with a cryogenic rotor. From the technical point of view, it is assumed that the cryogenically treated brake rotors result in an improved life of 100% to 300%, which means less downtime and lower labor and maintenance costs. In addition, it has also been found that the brake pads have an increased lifespan of about 10% to 50% with the use of cryo-treated brake rotors.
Cryogenic treatment has a good potential to significantly increase the life of automotive components, where friction and wear are the main factors in their operation leading to failure. The cryogenic treatment changes the surface as well as the properties of the component core compared to other treatments. It has a significant improvement in wear and hardness. Numerous studies have been conducted on the cryogenic treatment of steels and tool steels showing significant improvements in wear resistance, only minimal work has been done on cast iron. This study evaluated the effect of the cryogenic treatment on the wear resistance, hardness, tensile strength, tenacity and microstructure of spheroidal graphite iron. The deep cryogenic treatment was carried out at 87 K for 12 h and hybridized in the chamber itself. Samples were annealed at 473 K for 1 h. Hardness, toughness and tensile strength of the base material, cryotrylated and cryotted tempered samples were measured using the Rockwell hardness, the impact test machine and the Universal test machine, respectively. The wear studies were carried out using a disk disc wear test machine with EN 31 steel as a disk. There was a significant increase in hardness, toughness and tensile strength due to the cryogenic treatment.