Microstructure, Mechanical and Ablation Properties of C_sf Reinforced C-ZrC-CuNi Composites

Abstract

This study employs short-cut carbon fibers of varying contents as the reinforcing phase and prepares Csf/C-ZrC-CuNi composites via spark plasma sintering. The effects of short-cut carbon fiber content on the microstructure, mechanical properties, and ablation resistance of the composites are systematically investigated, and the fiber toughening and synergistic protection mechanisms are analyzed. The results indicate that the introduction of carbon fibers significantly suppresses the cracking tendency of the composites after ablation and promotes the formation of Cu2O and NiO, both of which act as sintering aids to densify the ZrO2 oxide layer, thereby synergistically enhancing the ablation resistance of the composites. At a carbon fiber content of 10 wt.%, the composites exhibit optimal comprehensive performance: the lowest ablation center temperature (2268 °C), a mass ablation rate of 2.00 mg/s, a linear ablation rate of −3.20 μm/s, and a flexural strength of 53.1 MPa. This study provides experimental evidence for the compositional design and performance optimization of ceramic composite high-temperature thermal protection materials.

Keywords

Csf/C-ZrC-CuNi composite / Short carbon fiber / Spark plasma sintering / Ablation resistance

Author Contributions

C.L. and H.O.: Writing-review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Y.X.: Writing-original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. S.Q.: Writing-review & editing, Supervision. X.W. (Xinnuo Wang): Validation, Data curation. X.N.: Validation, Data curation. X.W. (Xilin Wang): Investigation. X.S.: Investigation. S.Z.: Conceptualization. T.S.: Conceptualization. Y.L.: Conceptualization.

Ethics Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Data will be made available on request.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52372087, 52173299), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province(Grant No. 2025SYS-SYSZD-062).

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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