Oxidation degradation and mechanical reduction on C/SiC composites with artificial notch defects

Continuous carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide matrix composites (C/SiCs) have been widely used in aeronautic and astronautic fields because of their more attractive high temperature properties with less structural weight. However, reinforcing carbon fibers are susceptible to oxidation especially when the notch defects (ND) expose them to air. Mechanical tests, microstructural characterization combined with computed tomography (CT) were performed to explore the effect of the ND on the oxidation behavior and residual properties of the C/SiCs. Results showed that, before oxidation, the remaining bending strengths of the C/SiCs with even 5 ND numbers maintained still above 93%, indicating that increase of the ND numbers had little effect on mechanical properties. However, after oxidation at 700 °C, weight loss ratio of the C/SiCs with the ND numbers of 0, 1, 3 and 5 increased from 1.01% to 3.73%. It suggested that the more the ND numbers, the greater the proportion of carbon fiber exposed to air, and the less the oxidation resistance. Meanwhile, the residual bending strength remaining ratio of the C/SiCs largely reduced from 83.7% to 60.7% with the increase of ND numbers. It pointed out that the ND induced oxidation degradation of the reinforcing fiber caused higher sensitivity to the mechanical strength of the C/SiCs, and with the increase in the ND numbers, the strengths decreased more obviously.