A mesoscopic model of mechanical erosion for the characterization of ablation behavior of C/C woven composites

Carbon/carbon (C/C) composites suffer from the thermochemical ablation and mechanical erosion in the thermal protection system. A mathematical model describing the reaction/diffusion problem for the ther-mochemical ablation of C/C composites is established and numerically solved on the basis of the finite volume method and piecewise linear interface calculation. Then, a mesoscopic model including a failure criterion for the simulation of mechanical erosion of C/C woven composites is proposed. In the meso-scopic model of mechanical erosion, the mechanical erosion mechanism of C/C woven composites on the microscale is analyzed, and the mechanical erosion criterion of C/C woven composites from 2D plain wo-ven structure is extended to 2.5D woven structure. The ablation performances of woven structures under thermochemical ablation with and without mechanical erosion criterion are compared, and the effects of weaving structure features on the ablation performances of 2.5D woven structure under simulated me-chanical erosion are investigated. It shows that the mesoscopic model of mechanical erosion can well characterize the ablation behavior of C/C woven composites with different weaving forms. Some sugges-tions are provided for the design of C/C woven composites in the thermal protection system.(c) 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.