Interfacial property evaluation of SiC/SiC model composites

Ozawa, Kazumi; Nozawa, Takashi; Tanigawa, Hiroyasu; Kato, Yutai*; Snead, L. L.*

An advanced SiC/SiC composite is a candidate material for fusion DEMO reactor. Four types of model unidirectional SiC/SiC composites (minicomposites) with variations in fiber (Hi-Nicalon Type-S (HNLS), Tyranno-SA3, Sylramic and Sylramic-iBN) by chemical vapor infiltration method were evaluated for tensile and fiber/matrix interfacial properties. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) increased with the interfacial sliding stress () obtained by the hysteresis loop analysis for Tyranno-SA3, Sylramic and Sylramic-iBN. However, this was not the case for the HNLS composite. The composite achieved high UTS due to very low , arising from the larger residual radial tensile stress and smooth fiber surface. In contrast, the fracture behavior of the other composites may have been strongly affected by the clamping stress produced by the relatively rough fiber surfaces.