From pyrocarbon CVD to pyrocarbon CVI

摘要

The control of pyrocarbon CVI is a key issue in the elaboration of high-performance C/C composites with applications in aerospace parts and braking technology. For years, the precise knowledge of deposition kinetics and pyrocarbon microstructure (i.e. anisotropy at nanometer scale) has been rehearsed in various reactor and process configurations, such as hot-wall or cold-wall CVD, isothermal or thermal-gradient, pulsed, forced CVI with wide variations of pore sizes. We propose to review these efforts with a focus on the interplay between fluid dynamics and chemical kinetics, emphasizing on the example of propane decomposition in the set-up of a coherent modelling frame.