Experimental Study of Thermomechanical Characteristics of C/ARMC Composites at High Temperatures as Thermal Protection Systems for Aerospace Applications

A thermal protection system (TPS) is crucial in protecting spacecraft from aerothermal heating during atmospheric entry. Aerospace commonly uses carbon/phenolic composites for their high-temperature resilience Graphi-bond ARMC-551-RN is a commonly used composite system in high-temperature applications. The aim of this work is to observe the failure phenomenon in this system. I have gathered information about the thermomechanical properties of the C/ARMC composite by conducting thermal analysis, tensile testing, and temperature adjustments. One of the methods I used for thermal analysis is thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), which can detect changes in sample weight (mass) with respect to temperature or time and determine the temperature at which material degradation begins. The next step is to conduct a tensile test with temperature variations ranging from room temperature (RT) to 800 °C in increments of 100 °C. Observing failure modes such as matrix failure, fiber fracture, fiber debonding, and delamination is necessary to understand composite behavior. Through our research, we discovered that the composite material had the highest tensile strength at a temperature of 400 °C, measuring around 240 MPa. We confirmed this through the matrix's degradation at approximately 473.49 °C. Additionally, we observed various failure modes during temperature testing up to 800 °C. The thermomechanical data we obtained can be useful in designing a TPS for aerospace applications.