Effect of yarn sizes on the tensile damage evolution of a C/SiC composite fabricated by chemical vapor infiltration

The damage evolutions of C/SiC composites fabricated by chemical vapor infiltration with two different sizes of yarns were compared by cyclic tensile load/unload tests accompanied with the acoustic emission (AE) monitoring. The results show that an inflexion was observed in both the evolution of hysteresis characteristics and the corresponding AE curve for composite with fine yarns, which is, however, absent for composite with coarse yarns, suggesting that the former is much closer to the tough material than the latter one. Felicity effect was observed for both composites, which is more pronounced for the composite with coarse yarns due to the large yarn sizes leading to more matrix debris inside the yarns.