Material modeling of the CVI-infiltrated carbon felt II. Statistical study of the microstructure, numerical analysis and experimental validation

Abstract This paper employs the homogenization procedure proposed in [1] (Piat R, Tsukrov I, Mladenov N, Verijenko V, Guellali M, Schnack E, et al. Material modeling of the CVI-infiltrated carbon felt. I. Basic formulae, theory and numerical experiments. Compos Sci Technol, this issue) to predict the effective elastic properties of the CVI-densified carbon felts. It involves statistical analysis of the microstructure and approximation of pores by equivalent ellipsoids having the same volume, elongation and orientation as actual cavities. The distribution of these ellipsoids, their orientation and volume fraction is described by a distribution function obtained from the statistical data. This function is then utilized for calculation of the effective material parameters of the composite. The procedure is validated by comparing the calculated effective properties with the results of experiments conducted on two different modifications of the infiltrated carbon felt composite.