A comparative study for the thermal conductivities of C/SiC composites with different preform architectures fabricating by flexible oriented woven process

Abstract

Thermal conductivity behaviors are one of the most important evaluations of C/SiC composites in the field of thermal protective structures. Represent volume element (RVE) models of microscale, void/matrix, and mesoscale proposed in this work are used to investigate the thermal conductivity behaviors of the C/SiC composites with different preform architectures. The thermal conductivities of 2.5D woven composites (2.5D), 3D woven orthogonal composites (3D), 3D five-directional woven composites (3DFD) and the combination of three structures fabricating by the flexible oriented woven process (FOWP) are comparatively discussed. The periodic temperature boundary conditions are applied to the RVE models to predict the thermal conductivities (TCs). The proposed analytical methods are validated by the values from the experiment and the literature. In addition, the effect of porosity and structure combination sequences on TCs is also taken into consideration. The results show that the 3D woven orthogonal composites have the lowest TCs and the structure combination sequences have little effect on TCs of C/SiC composites. The present work can potentially help to improve the design process and provide a significant reference to select the appropriate preform architectures.