Predicting the Thermal Shock Resistance of Fiber Reinforced Brittle Matrix Composites

Abstract

The development of flaw-tolerant fiber-reinforced glass, glass-ceramic and ceramic matrix composites has resulted in a new family of high-temperature capability structural materials exhibiting quasi-ductile fracture behavior. While a great deal of research efforts have been devoted to study the mechanical behavior of these materials at both room and elevated temperatures, investigation of their behavior when subjected to abrupt thermal gradients, i.e. under thermal shock conditions, has received much less consideration. This is surprising, as the high-temperature applications for which these composite materials are candidate, e.g. in gas turbine engines, will inevitably involve some kind of thermal shock loading. It is therefore important to understand the materials` response under severe thermal transients and to be able to predict their thermal shock resistance. The topic of the present article is the development of an approach for the prediction of {Delta}{Tc} from data of the composite constituents and of the thermal shock conditions. The approach developed is compared with available experimental data on silicate matrix composites.