Numerical Assessment of Effective Elastic Properties of Needled Carbon/Carbon Composites Based on a Multiscale Method

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Needled carbon/carbon composites contain complex microstructures such as irregular pores, anisotropic pyrolytic carbon, and interphases between fibers and pyrolytic carbon matrices. Additionally, these composites have hierarchical structures including weftless plies, short-cut fiber plies, and needled regions. To predict the effective elastic properties of needled carbon/carbon composites, this paper proposes a novel sequential multiscale method. At the microscale, representative volume element (RVE) models are established based on the microstructures of the weftless ply, short-cut fiber ply, and needled region, respectively. In the microscale RVE model, a modified Voronoi tessellation method is developed to characterize anisotropic pyrolytic carbon matrices. At the macroscale, an RVE model containing hierarchical structures is developed to predict the effective elastic properties of needled carbon/carbon composites. For the data interaction between scales, the homogenization results of microscale models are used as inputs for the macroscale model. By comparing these against the experimental results, the proposed multiscale model is validated. Furthermore, the effect of porosity on the effective elastic properties of needled carbon/carbon composites is investigated based on the multiscale model. The results show that the effective elastic properties of needled carbon/carbon composites decrease with the increase in porosity, but the extent of decrease is different in different directions.