Characterization of NITE-SiC/SiC composites by acoustic emission

Nozawa, Takashi; Serizawa, Hisashi*; Koyama, Akira*; Tanigawa, Hiroyasu

Of many characterization methods, the acoustic emission (AE) technique is one of effective tools to monitor crack behavior in the material during the test and this technique has recently been applied to various composite materials. This study aims to apply the acoustic emission technique to the latest ceramic composite material: a nano-infiltration transient-eutectic phase sintered (NITE) silicon carbide fiber reinforced silicon carbide (SiC/SiC) composite to identify correlation between failure damage accumulation behavior and the AE signal pattern. Two types of fiber architecture: unidirectional (UD) and plain-weave (P/W) were accordingly addressed and tensile tests were conducted. Specifically, the Wavelet analysis was applied to evaluate the time-dependent damage accumulation process and to classify the key failure mechanism of this class of composites.