It is important to reveal the performance of carbon/carbon composites subjected to complex loading, which can provide a basis for developing the failure laws of carbon/carbon composites. The uniaxial and biaxial compressive performances of three-dimensional reinforced carbon/carbon composites (3D C/C) were investigated in this paper. The results showed that the compressive strength becomes larger when the loading direction parallels to the z-direction of 3D C/C. The uniaxial compression failure was mainly caused by fracture fiber bundles to form an overall shear fault in the z-direction. The failure mode was delamination of fiber bundle/matrix interface for the x- and y-direction samples. The biaxial compressive failure of x-y direction compressioncompression specimen was caused by the low interlaminar shear strength. In addition,for y-z and z-x direction compression-compression samples,the shear-type failure was formed on the surface of the specimen plumbing the loading direction. Overall,the weak-interface is still a main factor to influent the fracture mechanism of 3D C/C.
The thermal protection materials and structures are widely used in hypersonic vehicles for the purpose of thermal insulation, and their mechanical behavior is one of the key issues in design and manufacture of hypersonic vehicles. It is our great pleasure to present the seven papers in this special subject of Theoretical ＆ Applied Mechanics Letters （TAML） and introduce the recent progresses on the mechanical behavior of thermal protection materials and structures by the authors.
Nanoindentation tests were conducted to investigate the near-surface mechanical properties of the individual components(fiber and matrix) for three-dimensional reinforced carbon/carbon composites(3D C/C).Optical microscope and polarizing light microscope were used to characterize the microstructure of 3D C/C.The microscopy results show that large number of pores and cracks exist at both bundle/matrix interface and pitch carbon matrix.These defects have important effect on the mechanical behavior of 3D C/C.The in situ properties for components of 3D C/C were acquired by nanoindentation technique.Relative to the matrix sample,the fiber samples have more larger values for modulus,stiffness and hardness.However,there is no significant difference of modulus and stiffness among fiber samples with different directions.
