Thermo-Mechanical Monitoring of Composite Materials during the Pyrolysis of C/C Composites

Abstract

Conventional mechanical and structural properties allow to describe the complete composite material. They do, however, not describe the reaction during the pyrolysis process. The dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) is a technique which is used to characterize materials. In particular, the DMTA method is used to observe the viscoelastic nature of polymers. Another interesting application area of the DMTA is the simulation of pyrolysis experiments to obtain carbon/carbon composites (C/C composites). The pyrolysis process of carbon-fibre-reinforced plastics (CFRP) was performed by means of inert gas (Ar, ambient pressure) under a defined time-temperature profile or alternatively approached by short time sweeps in a DMTA. So the temperature dependence of the elastic modulus (E-modulus) and of the internal damping (tan δ) are determined starting from the cured carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic to the transformed C/C composites. The analyses were applied for different matrix resins. The shown method improves the access to usually hidden mechanical and structural properties and requires further investigation of the entire polymerization and pyrolysis processes.