Microstructure, thermophysical property and ablation behavior of high thermal conductivity carbon/carbon composites after heat-treatment

Uni-directional carbon/carbon composites with high thermal conductivity are suitable to supply continuous thermal protection for future reentry vehicles since they could reduce surface temperature and ablation rates simultaneously in harsh environments. In this work, the high thermal conductivity carbon/carbon composites were prepared by chemical vapor infiltration. After heat-treatment, both their open porosity and internal friction increase due to the fiber/matrix thermal expansion mismatch; while their thermal conductive performance become better due to more complete carbon structure. With raising heat-treatment temperature from 1800 °C to 2450 °C, the mass and linear ablation rates of C/C composites with fibers vertical to the oxyacetylene torch for 60 s decrease from 0.66 mg/s and 2.95 μm/s to 0.51 mg/s and 2.05 μm/s respectively. The improved ablation resistance is resulted from the increased thermal conductivity from 282 to 508 W/(m·K) and more carbon fibers exposed to the flame during ablation, which have better oxidation resistance than those of carbon matrix. While such ablation rates become larger for composites with fibers parallel to the flame, from 1.02 mg/s and 3.73 μm/s to 1.28 mg/s and 5.01 μm/s respectively since the ablation occurred more easily through gaps at the fiber/matrix interfaces, which become larger and are always exposed to the flame for this case.