Internal damage evolution investigation of C/SiC composites using in-situ tensile X-ray computed tomography testing and digital volume correlation at 1000 °C

Ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) have lots of distributed manufacture-induced defects, which affect the mechanical response at high temperature heavily. In this paper, in-situ tensile experimental characterization using micro X-ray computed tomography (μCT) at room temperature and 1000 °C were performed to characterize the internal damage evolution process of 2D woven C/SiC composites. The 3D geometry morphologies of composites under different loading were visualized reconstructing the CT images and the internal damage parameters were extracted. Meanwhile, the internal 3D deformation fields of composites under tension at room temperature and 1000 °C were monitored using digital volume correlation (DVC) method. The results showed that the mechanical properties and internal damage evolution process of the specimen at room temperature and 1000 °C were quite different. Meanwhile, the measured 3D deformation fields could predict the failure mode and fracture location in the specimens before the final failure.