Mechanical and tribological properties of 2-D carbon/carbon composites densified through pulse chemical vapor infiltration

This paper presents the mechanical and tribological properties of 2-D carbon/carbon composites (C/C) fabricated by the Pulse Chemical Vapor Infiltration (PCVI) process. In the PCVI process, various fabrication temperatures and different reactant pressures were adopted to investigate the influence of processing condition on physical properties, microstructure and mechanical properties. In the densification process by PCVI, holding time and pulse number are two parameters which significantly affect physical properties (such as density, porosity, and weight gain) and mechanical properties (such as interlaminar strength and wear properties). It is found that the wear properties of carbon/carbon composites can be improved obviously after the densification by 1000 pulses. Effects of initial open porosity on density of the fabricated composites are also studied. In this work, tribological performance of the specimens fabricated through the Isothermal Chemical Vapor Infiltration (ICVI) process and the PCVI process under different pulse cycles are compared. Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) was used to examine the morphology of worn surface. The relationship between the tribological performance and surface morphology was studied.