Mechanical response and damage mechanism of C/SiC composites impacted by high-velocity water jet

Rain erosion is a potential hazard for supersonic vehicles, with severe damage to materials that may be impacted by raindrops. In this paper, a series of impact tests of 413–572 m/s are carried out on a 3 mm-thick 2D C/SiC composite specimen using a single impact waterjet apparatus. The typical morphology of C/SiC specimen is obtained by single jet impact test. Under the multi-drop impact, the stress wave interaction is enhanced, and the internal damage of the specimen is severe, showing a funnel-shaped damage. Moreover, the C/SiC specimen is penetrated after 5 drops of impact. Quasi-static tensile tests were employed to quantify the post-impact strength of the specimen, during which the digital image correlation (DIC) method was used to obtain the strain value, at the same time acoustic emission (AE) signal was detected and processed by the K-Means to reveal the damage evolution.