Concept

Chemical vapor infiltration

Résumé
Chemical vapour infiltration (CVI) is a ceramic engineering process whereby matrix material is infiltrated into fibrous preforms by the use of reactive gases at elevated temperature to form fiber-reinforced composites. The earliest use of CVI was the infiltration of fibrous alumina with chromium carbide. CVI can be applied to the production of carbon-carbon composites and ceramic-matrix composites. A similar technique is chemical vapour deposition (CVD), the main difference being that the deposition of CVD is on hot bulk surfaces, while CVI deposition is on porous substrates. During chemical vapour infiltration, the fibrous preform is supported on a porous metallic plate through which a mixture of carrier gas along with matrix material is passed at an elevated temperature. The preforms can be made using yarns or woven fabrics or they can be filament-wound or braided three-dimensional shapes. The infiltration takes place in a reactor which is connected to an effluent-treatment plant where the gases and residual matrix material are chemically treated. Induction heating is used in a conventional isothermal and isobaric CVI. A typical demonstration of the process is shown in Figure 1. Here, the gases and matrix material enter the reactor from the feed system at the bottom of the reactor. The fibrous preform undergoes a chemical reaction at high temperature with the matrix material and thus the latter infiltrates in the fiber or preform crevices. The CVI growth mechanism is shown in Figure 2. Here, as the reaction between fibre surface and the matrix material takes place, a coating of matrix is formed on the fibre surface while the fibre diameter decreases. The unreacted reactants along with gases exit the reactor via outlet system and are transferred to an effluent treatment plant. The ‘hot wall’ technique – isothermal and isobaric CVI, is still widely used.
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